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Published on: November 3, 2013
Banking of fresh-frozen prostate tissue: methods, validation and use
A C P Riddick1, C Barker, I Sheriffs
1Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, Norwich, UK.
Objective:
To describe the establishment, methods, validation and use of a bank of fresh-frozen human prostate tissue.
Materials And Methods:
On obtaining informed patient consent, protocols were followed for banking prostate tissue from any type of prostatectomy or cystoprostatectomy. A pseudobanking procedure was devised to determine the accuracy of assessing the histopathological status of the banked tissue. RNA was extracted, its quality assessed and used for quantitative real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction for the serine protease hepsin.
Results:
To date prostate tissue from 112 patients has been banked, with pseudobanking in 58. The histopathological assessment showed pseudobanked tissue matched adjacent unbanked tissue in 98% of cases for benign vs malignant diagnoses, and in 92% of carcinomas for the Gleason score. Hepsin expression was significantly higher in malignant than in benign tissues (P < 0.0001).
Conclusion:
We established a validated method for banking human fresh-frozen prostate tissue and applied it successfully. Hepsin expression can be used to differentiate malignant and benign prostate tissue, and as an indicator of tissue heterogeneity.
