Output quality in cancer research and drug development is largely dependent on the quality of the question posed and the underlying scientific rationales. However, the quality of the biological materials used for such research has been recognized as an equally important driver for the development of an effective and efficient individualized cancer therapy.
Tissue samples change molecular profiles and start degrading immediately after separation from patient’s blood supply. In this perspective, several exogenous factors have been identified, which affect the molecular and genetic composition of human tissue samples before, during and after the surgical resection.
INIDVUMED’s unique approach of human cancer biospecimen procurement considers the following variables as crucial parameters in order to provide tissue samples that reflect molecular reality, a requirement to enable efficient cancer drug profiling and discovery research services.
Tissue ischemia times (intra– and postsurgical) significantly change gene and protein expression. Following tumor resection, approx. 25-30% of proteins and 20-25% of genes are differentially expressed within the first 30 minutes.
Tumor areas (e.g. periphery vs. center) differ in molecular patterns. It has been shown that up to 40% of protein investigated were differently expressed between peripheral and central tumor regions.
Drugs administered during surgery indicated to affect protein expression patterns.
Processing protocols need to be standardized in order to enable comparison between samples. Deviations in sample preparation are known to have a strong impact on sample quality, e.g. sample size to fixative volume ratio.
