Some new approaches to the detection of programmed cell death

Apoptosis, or programmed cell death, is a form of cell death occurring during normal physiological processes and is used by the multicellular organism for elimination of "old" and impaired cells. Apoptosis is characterized by specific morphological changes such as plasma membrane blebbing, nucleus condensation, and cell wrinkling with further destruction into apoptotic bodies. Apoptosis detection is in focus of instrumental methods used in modem biomedical sciences. The available methods for such purpose are either very expensive, or require time-consuming operations. Their specificity and sensitivity are frequently not sufficient for biomedical diagnostics. We propose to use light scattering analysis for evaluation of apoptosis in cell population, especially for the detection of physical changes of cells, such as cell condensation and degradation into apoptotic bodies. The method proved to be very effective, providing quantitative estimation and high precision, simplicity and low costs of analysis (UA Patent No.64090). Another approach for the detection of apoptosis is based on the recently discovered fact (Bilyy, Stoika 2003; Bilyy et al, 2004; 2005) that apoptotic cells are characterized by increased expression levels of specific glycoproteins in the plasma membrane, which were proved to be selective and specific markers of apoptotic cells. Specific carbohydrate-binding proteins - lectins - were used for identification of mentioned glycoproteins; fluorescent conjugates of lectins were proved to be another novel tool for apoptosis identification using approaches of biophotonics.