Abstract 1404: A red-shifted fluorescent substrate for aldehyde dehydrogenase, AldeRed 588-A, for labeling viable ALDH-positive cells

Abstract

Abstract Normal and cancer stem cells can be isolated based upon the enzymatic activity of aldehyde dehydrogenase I (ALDH1), a detoxifying enzyme responsible for oxidation of hazardous aldehyde byproducts. ALDH1 has been used to isolate cancer stem cells of various human malignancies including bladder, breast, cervical, colon, head and neck, liver, lung, pancreas, prostate and ovary. Currently, the ALDEFLUORTM assay which uses a fluorescent substrate is the only commercially available reagent for ALDH detection. The substrate used in this assay primarily emits in the green region of the electromagnetic spectrum (512nm). For researchers with valuable cell and transgenic animal models in which the target gene of interest has been tagged with eGFP, ALDEFLUOR therefore cannot be used. Selection of cells positive for aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH) activity from a green fluorescent background is thus difficult with existing reagents. We now describe a red-shifted fluorescent substrate for ALDH, AldeRed 588-A, that provides additional flexibility for utilizing ALDH as a marker for stem cell and cancer stem cell isolation. The activity of AldRed 588-A was compared with the ALDEFLUOR reagent and demonstrated similar ability to fractionate ALDHpos cells in a number of cell lines tested. Citation Format: Vi Chu, Konstantin Taganov, D Ramesh, Nick Asbrock, Martin Pomper. A red-shifted fluorescent substrate for aldehyde dehydrogenase, AldeRed 588-A, for labeling viable ALDH-positive cells. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 106th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2015 Apr 18-22; Philadelphia, PA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2015;75(15 Suppl):Abstract nr 1404. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2015-1404