Tandem Mass Spectrometry-Based Amyloid Typing Using Manual Microdissection and Open-Source Data Processing.

Objectives: Standard implementations of amyloid typing by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry use capabilities unavailable to most clinical laboratories. To improve accessibility of this testing, we explored easier approaches to tissue sampling and data processing.

Methods: We validated a typing method using manual sampling in place of laser microdissection, pairing the technique with a semiquantitative measure of sampling adequacy.

Quantification of Human Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor 2 by Immunopeptide Enrichment and Targeted Mass Spectrometry in Formalin-Fixed Paraffin-Embedded and Frozen Breast Cancer Tissues.

Background: Conventional HER2-targeting therapies improve outcomes for patients with HER2-positive breast cancer (BC), defined as tumors showing HER2 protein overexpression by immunohistochemistry and/or ERBB2 gene amplification determined by in situ hybridization (ISH). Emerging HER2-targeting compounds show benefit in some patients with neither HER2 protein overexpression nor ERBB2 gene amplification, creating a need for new assays to select HER2-low tumors for treatment with these compounds. We evaluated the analytical performance of a targeted mass spectrometry-based assay for quantifying HER2 protein in formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) and frozen BC biopsies.

Effect of immediate cold formalin fixation on phosphoprotein IHC tumor biomarker signal in liver tumors using a cold transport device.

Phosphoproteins are the key indicators of signaling network pathway activation. Many disease treatment therapies are designed to inhibit these pathways and effective diagnostics are required to evaluate the efficacy of these treatments. Phosphoprotein IHC have been impractical for diagnostics due to inconsistent results occurring from technical limitations.

Monitoring Dehydration and Clearing in Tissue Processing for High-Quality Clinical Pathology.

The development of precision testing for disease diagnosis has advanced medicine by specifically matching patients with drugs to treat specific diseases. High-quality diagnostics start with high-quality tissue specimens. The development and optimization of tissue handling and processing have lagged behind bioassay development.

Precision Medicine Starts With Preanalytics: Real-Time Assessment of Tissue Fixation Quality by Ultrasound Time-of-Flight Analysis.

Personalized medicine promises diagnosis and treatment of disease at the individual level and relies heavily on clinical specimen integrity and diagnostic assay quality. Preanalytics, the collection and handling steps of a clinical specimen before immunohistochemistry or other clinical assay, are critically important to enable the correct diagnosis of disease. However, the effects of preanalytics are often overlooked due to a lack of standardization and limited assessment tools to quantify their variation.

Brominated polyacetylenes from the Philippines sponge Diplastrella sp.

Five novel brominated polyacetylenic diols, diplynes A-E (2-6), and three sulfated analogues, diplyne A 1-sulfate (7), diplyne C 1-sulfate (8), and 2-deoxydiplyne D sulfate (9), were isolated from the Philippines sponge Diplastrella sp. by employing bioassay-guided fractionation using the HIV-1 integrase inhibition assay. The novel metabolites were characterized by interpretation of spectroscopic data.