Fluorescence-Guided Resection of Malignant Glioma with 5-ALA

Figure 3

(a) Ferrochelatase (FeC) activity. Note that the FeC activity clearly decreased more in the malignant glioma cells () than in the control cells () (). The FeC activity is expressed by the amount of heme biosynthesized from PpIX per unit time. Namely, the unit of FeC activity is nmol of heme formed/mg/organ/h. The unit of PpIX is nmol/g/organ. (b) The correlation between the FeC activity and the amount of PpIX in the mitochondria or in the whole cell. The left panel shows the relationship between the total intracellular amount of PpIX and the FeC activity. The right panel shows the relationship between the amount of PpIX in the mitochondria and the FeC activity. Note that the FeC activity and the total amount of PpIX were positively correlated (). The FeC activity and the amount of PpIX in the mitochondria were negatively correlated (). Namely, the FeC activity decreased with an increase in the accumulated amount of PpIX in the mitochondria. (c) The amount of heme in the mitochondria. The amount of heme in the mitochondria was compared between the control cells () and tumor cells (). This amount was remarkably smaller in the tumor tissue than in the normal tissue ().

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