Why the study?
The potential of formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded blocks for transcriptional profiling has been little exploited because the quality of extracted RNA is uncertain.
Formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissue blocks can serve as a viable source of mRNA for transcriptional profiling.
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FFPE blocks may enable 3D transcriptional profiling in cancer; hypothesis-generating and requires validation before clinical use.
Cancer tissue obtained by biopsy or at surgery is usually handled and stored as formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) blocks. While primarily prepared for histological examination, this material represents a valuable resource that is stable and transportable, and which is ideal for examination in 3 dimensions. It has been used for DNA and protein analysis but the potential for transcriptional profiling has been little exploited: the quality of the extracted RNA is uncertain and there are few reports of its efficient use. We review the background and practicalities of this approach and describe a pilot study as a worked example in which RNA of good yield and quality could be consistently obtained from differentiated areas of adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC) tissue.
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Waszut et al. (2022) studied this question.
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