142 CHAPTER 5 As in vivo profiling of (tumor) tissue is impossible, one cannot perform molecular profiling without potentially inducing any procedure-related effect. It is impossible to determine which of both snap freezing methods preserves in vivo profiles best. Cancer cell samples left at room temperature for two hours prior to snap freezing were used as a control to show that profiles do change in time. However, when optimal sampling of biospecimens is clinically implemented, no significant differences in molecular profiles are expected based on the freezing rate experiments as described here. This study was designed to compare technical replicates. Although the included clinical sample size was small, results were consistent throughout all comparisons of both phosphoproteomic and RNA sequencing analyses. In conclusion, the novel snap freezer prototype identifies similar protein- and RNA-based molecular profiles of biological samples including individual patient tissues as obtained with the golden standard of LN2 quenching. Importantly, this snap freezer overcomes several practical limitations of LN2 and may provide a useful tool enabling wider implementation of (multi-) omics analyses for precision oncology. Feasibility and usability for snap freezing tumor biopsies in the context of a (precision oncology) clinical trial or the routine clinical setting should be assessed as the next critical step towards its implementation and commercial development. ACKNOWLEDEGEMENT This publication is part of the project CryoON - Cryogenics meets Oncology: A novel cryogenic device to snap-freeze and transport biopsies (with project number 14014-CryoON) of the research programme which is (partly) financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTk4NDMw