Minimally invasive autopsy as a useful tool for RNA extraction in molecular pathology of lung diseases

Minimally invasive autopsy (MIA) is used to understand the pathophysiological mechanisms and clinical outcome of diseases. One of its many advantages is the lower risk of contamination in case of infectious diseases and the quick tissue collection procedure compared to conventional autopsies, which reduces cold ischemia time. Here we investigated the potential role of MIA for molecular pathology studies by comparing RNA yield and quality after RNA extraction from frozen lung tissue samples collected from different methods: MIA, lobectomy, and transbronchial biopsy (TBB). Our results revealed that RNA yield was significantly higher (P<0.05) in the TBB group compared to the lobectomy and MIA groups. However, 93% of MIA samples were non-degraded, showing similar results to TBB, where all had a DV200≥70%. Therefore, MIA proves to be a novel tool for molecular pulmonary pathology in diagnostic and/or research settings.