Archival formalin fixed, paraffin embedded (FFPE) samples are increasingly becoming attractive sources of nucleic acid material in the scientific community; these samples often have extensive metadata attached to them with respect to clinical treatments and outcomes, and they often times provide the most feasible method to study rare, difficult to access, or quickly progressing tumor types where accumulating live study participants is onerous or impossible on a reasonable time scale. However, these samples are notoriously difficult to extract, evaluate for quality control and use in preparing next-generation sequencing (NGS) libraries. In this seminar, participants will become familiar with all aspects of the FFPE process, including methods of preservation; pre and post fixation variables that can affect nucleic acid quality; and best practices for nucleic acid extraction and quality assessment, NGS library preparation, sequencing, and bioinformatic analysis. Target audience is scientists, predominantly in genomics and bioinformatics, but also potential interest from proteomics, flow cytometry, and pathology disciplines.
Organizer:
Marie Adams & other DSRG Members