Post-mortem tissue biopsies obtained at minimally invasive autopsy: an RNA-quality analysis.

Introduction: Bereaved relatives often refuse to give consent for post-mortem investigation of deceased cancer patients, mainly because of the mutilation due to conventional autopsy (CA). Minimally invasive autopsy (MIA) may be a more acceptable alternative and, if implemented in clinical practice, creates an opportunity to more often obtain post-mortem tissue samples of (recurred) primary tumors and metastases for molecular research. As a measure for tissue quality for molecular studies, we hereby present a feasibility study, comparing the RNA quality of MIA and CA samples, and fresh frozen samples as reference.