Morphological Bone Score as a Predictive Tool for Molecular Profiling Success

Area of Science:

• Histopathology
• Molecular Diagnostics
• Oncology

Background:

• Decalcification of bone tumor samples is crucial for histologic processing but can degrade nucleic acids, leading to next-generation sequencing (NGS) failures.
• This degradation hinders accurate molecular genetic diagnostics and patient treatment strategies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce and validate the Morphological Bone Score (MBS) for assessing decalcified bone tumor tissue quality.
• To improve diagnostic accuracy and cost-efficiency in molecular genetic laboratories by optimizing tissue sample assessment.

Main Methods:

• Development of the Morphological Bone Score (MBS) based on five key morphologic features.
• Assigning scores from 0 to 11 to quantify tissue damage and its correlation with nucleic acid yield.
• Implementing MBS to exclude poor-quality samples from NGS workflows.

Main Results:

• MBS directly correlates with tissue damage and nucleic acid yields per cell.
• Excluding low-quality samples identified by MBS in an NGS workflow resulted in significant cost savings ($1500 per sample).
• The MBS threshold is adjustable to balance sensitivity and accuracy for specific analytical goals.

Conclusions:

• The MBS offers an objective, consistent, and cost-effective method for evaluating pathologic bone samples.
• This tool enhances tissue utilization and optimizes downstream profiling in precision oncology.
• Further verification may allow integration into computational models for morphologic feature quantification.