Substrate-zymography: a still worthwhile method for gelatinases analysis in biological samples

Matrix metallo-proteinases (MMPs) are a family of zinc-dependent endopeptidases, capable of degrading all the molecular components of extracellular matrix. A class of MMPs is gelatinases which includes gelatinase A or MMP-2 (72 kDa) and gelatinase B or MMP-9 (92 kDa), which have been shown to play critical roles in pathophysiology of many human disease and, in particular, cancer progression. For these reasons they obtained a great interest as potential non-invasive biomarker in providing useful clinical information in cancer diagnosis and therapy. A sensitive and unexpensive method for analysis of gelatinases is the gelatine zymography, which allows to measure the relative amounts of active and inactive enzymes in body fluids and tissue extracts. The procedure involves the electrophoretic separation of proteins under denaturing but non reducing conditions through a polyacrylamide gel containing a synthetic substrate (gelatin). The aim of this mini-review has been to describe the general principles of gelatine zymography technique, underling the main advantages and disadvantages. Even though an improvement of this method is necessary for a better applicability in laboratory medicine, gelatine zymography represents the most convenient method to detect the activity of the different gelatinases from a wide range of biological samples.