New NIH Grant: Advanced development and validation of aliquot-level visual indicators of biospecimen exposure to th — $354K at Unknown Institution
WHY IT MATTERS
Patients with breast cancer undergoing HER2 testing depend on properly preserved tissue samples for accurate diagnosis; visual thaw indicators could prevent misdiagnosis caused by specimen degradation.
Scientists are developing a new tool to help doctors know when frozen tissue and blood samples have thawed or been stored improperly. This matters because many cancer tests, like HER2 testing for breast cancer, require samples to stay fresh and cold. If samples warm up accidentally, the test results could be wrong. This $354,000 research project will create visual indicators—like color-changing labels—that show when a sample has been exposed to unsafe temperatures.
Project: Advanced development and validation of aliquot-level visual indicators of biospecimen exposure to thawed conditions PI: BORGES, CHAD R Institution: Unknown Institution Funding: $354K Start Date: 2026-05-08 Abstract: Project Summary/Abstract Many biological analytes of interest to both clinical oncologists and cancer researchers are unstable when the unfixed biospecimens in which they reside are exposed to thawed conditions. For example, American Society of Clinical Oncology / College of American Pathologists guidelines state that the post-excision-up-to-fixation exposure time span for tissues collected for clinical HER2 testing in breast cancer must be less than 1 hour. For blood plasma/serum and many types of tissue specimens that are to be frozen, the proper cold storage temperature is well below the co