15283-B-Blokker

129 PM tissue biopsies obtained at MIA: an RNA-quality analysis 7 and putrefaction) 204 or "warm ischemia" and cause faster degradation of RNA. Since the surrounding temperatures of both the hospital and mortuary have been similar for all cases in our study, they probably hardly affected the course of decreasing core temperatures, especially not to the extent obesity did. According to Byard et al., obesity also complicates the autopsy, both in a practical manner and, together with the metabolic syndrome, in the diagnostic process. 204 In our experience, the combination of imaging and CT guided tissue biopsies eased these practical issues, and the tissue quality of MIA samples at least equals that of CA samples. On top of that, MIA could also be less expensive than CA. 57 The diagnostic aspects, however, remain to be further investigated. In conclusion, although RNA integrity is lower in MIA and CA samples than in fresh frozen tissues, MIA and CA samples can be used to detect GAPDH PCR products up to 530 base pairs. This implies that tissue obtained by MIA yields a sufficient amount of RNA with a sufficient quality for gene array based research. Therefore, the MIA procedure is a feasible method for researchers to obtain metastatic tumor tissue for molecular translational research. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors would like to thank Martin Rijlaarsdam for advise on statistical analyses and Anieta Sieuwerts for help and advice on RT-qPCR.