Related Experiment Video
Updated: Nov 15, 2025
Absorbent Microbiopsy Sampling and RNA Extraction for Minimally Invasive, Simultaneous Blood and Skin Analysis
Published on: February 21, 2019
Core needle biopsy wash as a tool for acquiring additional diagnostic material for laboratory testing
Wilfrido Mojica1, Katherine Cwiklinski2, Xiaobing Jin3
1Pathology and Anatomical Sciences, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York, USA mojica@buffalo.edu.
Aims:
To determine if a simple prewash step added to the processing workflow of tissue procurement by a core needle biopsy device will recover enough cells to expand the laboratory testing armamentarium.
Methods:
Tissue was obtained from unfixed resection specimens using a core needle device and washed in a buffered solution before fixation. This creates a liquid aliquot from which dislodged cells can be kept and separated from the tissue specimen, the latter of which can then undergo traditional formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded processing.
Results:
Cells dislodged from the tissue during the biopsy procedure are recoverable, are representative of the tissue section and of sufficient quantities for additional laboratory testing.
Conclusions:
The core needle biopsy wash is an under-recognised and underutilised approach to extending the diagnostic capabilities of the limited amount of targeted material obtained during this common procedure. The ability to recover supplemental amounts of diagnostic material yields great potential as a substrate for a multitude of current and developing laboratory assays.
