Archive tissue biobanking as a basis for translational and reverse translational research

Fixed and paraffin-embedded tissues (Archive Tissues – AT) are the only tissues usually available for any patient. For this reason any diagnostic molecular analysis should be performed in this type of tissues. Nowadays we are able to perform any kind of nucleic acid or proteomics analysis in AT and most of these methods have been validated. Preservation of tissues can be quite different depending on pre-analytical conditions and special effort should be done to standardize the treatments.

AT is the only available collection of tissues that really represent the clinical heterogeneity of human diseases. In fact, we have in our pathology archives any kind of even rare lesions, with also well defined subtypes, clinical information and long follow-up periods. Pathologists are the only experts able to correctly microdissect tissues to obtain reliable and reproducible analytical results. Moreover, they have a central position in the harmonization of the huge morphological-histological knowledge, reached in human pathology with the new molecular information.