Simply put, for most patients, a tissue biopsy can be costly, painful, and potentially risky.
Regardless of the challenges in obtaining adequate tissue for biopsy purposes, minimally invasive technologies have managed to:
Hence, the potential role of “liquid biopsy” is now being evaluated as an alternative for tissue biopsy.
Due to increased efforts to develop more effective cancer therapies, there is an increased demand for specimens that allow molecular analysis of tumor tissues and isolation of the proteins. This means that a safe, efficient, reproducible and cost-effective process of deparaffinization is required. Releasing proteins from FFPE specimens can be daunting as the extensive molecular crosslinking that occurs through formalin fixation lowers the efficiency of protein extraction and may also interfere with immunoreactivity. This warrants the development of more advanced and efficient extraction methods.
The lack of a universal method for preparing FFPE tissue samples makes choosing the right supplier a critical component of tissue research. Following a few guidelines will help ensure your tissue research leads to clinically useful results.
