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Quantitative Gene Expression Profiling in Formalin-Fixed Paraffin-Embedded Samples by Affymetrix Microarrays

ABSTRACT: Background: To date, few studies have systematically characterized microarray gene expression signal performance with degraded RNA from formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) specimens in comparison to intact RNA from unfixed fresh-frozen (FF) specimens. Methodology: RNA was extracted and isolated from paired tumor and normal samples from both FFPE and FF kidney, lung and colon tissue specimens. Microarray signal dynamics on both the raw probe and probeset level were evaluated. A contrast metric was developed to directly compare microarray signal derived from RNA extracted from matched FFPE and FF specimens. Gene-level summaries were then compared to determine the degree of overlap in expression profiles. Results: RNA extracted from FFPE material was more degraded and fragmented than FF, resulting in reduced dynamic range of expression signal. It was found that probe performance is not affected uniformly and declines sharply toward 5’ end of genes. The most significant differences in FFPE vs. FF signal were consistent across three tissue types and enriched with ribosomal genes. Significance: Our results show that archived FFPE samples can be used to profile for expression signatures and assess differential expression similar to unfixed tissue sources. This study provides guidelines for application of these methods in the discovery, validation, and clinical application of microarray expression profiling with FFPE material.

ORGANISM(S): Homo sapiens

PROVIDER: GSE19249 | GEO | 2010/11/25

SECONDARY ACCESSION(S): PRJNA120789

REPOSITORIES: GEO

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Project description:This study was performed to evaluated RNA extraction and gene expression analysis of FFPE specimen stored for more than 20 years. Using long time stored FFPE material; large retrospective studies correlating molecular features with therapeutic response and clinical outcome, can be performed. Quantitative PCR (qPCR) was used to evaluate RNA extraction methods and to compare gene expression profiles of FFPE and fresh frozen (FF) tissue. Extracted RNA was subsequently subjected to microarray analysis and compared to qPCR data. The Ambion RecoverAll kit appears to be particularly suited for RNA extraction of long time stored FFPE tissues. Gene expression analysis using Affymetrix platform displayed a high degree of correlation for endogenous control genes comparing FF and FFPE tissues. We conclude that high quality gene expression signatures can be recognized using Affymetrix gene expression platform on FFPE tissue stored for more than 20 years. However, a general interpretation must be done with caution as different FFPE procedures have varying effects on RNA quality. Three RNA extraction methods from Roche (Basel, Switzerland), Ambion (Austin, TX, USA) and Qiagen (Hilden, Germany), designed for FFPE material was used. The methods were compared using qPCR. For the qPCR analysis, two different concentrations of input cDNA were used (20ng and 100ng) and 32 human endogenous control genes were examined. RNA from the Ambion FFPE kit was further analyzed by using microarray. Amplification of RNA prior to microarray analysis was performed using Nugen technologies (San Carlos, CA, USA). Nugen has developed amplification kits both for FFPE and FF materials: WT- ovation FFPE RNA amplification System V2 (Nugen FFPE), Ovation FF RNA Amplification System V2 (Nugen V2 FF) and Ovation FF Pico RNA Amplification System (Nugen PICO FF). The Nugen FFPE kit, designed for FFPE material was only used for FFPE tissue. The Nugen Pico FF kit, designed to target small amounts of FF RNA (>500 pg) and the Nugen V2 FF kit designed to target total FF RNA, were only used for FF tissue. Affymetrix standard amplification protocol (Affy FF) designed for FF RNA was also included as the standard method for amplification.

Project description:This experiment contains the RNA-Seq samples only. Formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissues are an invaluable resource for clinical research. However, nucleic acids extracted from FFPE tissues are fragmented and chemically modified making them challenging to use in molecular studies. We analysed 23 fresh-frozen (FF), 35 FFPE and 38 paired FF/FFPE specimens, representing six different human tissue types (bladder, prostate and colon carcinoma; liver and colon normal tissue; reactive tonsil) in order to examine the potential use of FFPE samples in next-generation sequencing (NGS) based retrospective and prospective clinical studies. Two methods for DNA and three methods for RNA extraction from FFPE tissues were compared and were found to affect nucleic acid quantity and quality. DNA and RNA from selected FFPE and paired FF/FFPE specimens were used for exome and transcriptome analysis. Preparations of DNA Exome-Seq libraries was more challenging (29.5 % success) than that of RNA-Seq libraries, presumably because of modifications to FFPE tissue-derived DNA. Libraries could still be prepared from RNA isolated from two-decade old FFPE tissues. Data were analysed using the CLC Bio Genomics Workbench and revealed systematic differences between FF and FFPE tissue-derived nucleic acid libraries. In spite of this, pairwise analysis of DNA Exome-Seq data showed concordance for 70-80 % of variants in FF and FFPE samples stored for fewer than three years. RNA-Seq data showed high correlation of expression profiles in FF/FFPE pairs (Pearson Correlations of 0.90 +/- 0.05), irrespective of storage time (up to 244 months) and tissue type. A common set of 1,494 genes was identified with expression profiles that were significantly different between paired FF and FFPE samples irrespective of tissue type. Our results are promising and suggest that NGS can be used to study FFPE specimens in both prospective and retrospective archive-based studies in which FF specimens are not available.

Project description:Background and Aims Formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissue is the most commonly available form of archived clinical specimens, which are often stored as thin sections on glass slides. RNA isolated from such archived section (AS) of FFPE tissue is more degraded compared to freshly cut (FC) FFPE section because of prolonged air exposure. In this study, we evaluated performance of transcriptome profiling-based disease classification in AS-FFPE tissue. Methods Genome-wide gene-expression profiles of AS-FFPE tissues of 83 hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and 47 liver cirrhosis samples were generated by using whole-genome DASL assay (Illumina), and compared with the profiles previously produced by using FC tissue sections from the same FFPE blocks. Quality of the profiles and performance of gene signature-based class prediction were systematically evaluated. Results RNA quality and assay reproducibility of AS-FFPE RNA were comparable to intermediate ~ poor quality FC-FFPE samples (R2 as high as 0.93). Gene-expression signal was detected in lower number of probes in AS FFPE samples compared to FC-FFPE samples (proportion of probes with present signal (%P-call): 10%~60% and 70%~90% in AS- and FC-FFPE profiles, respectively). Based on %P-call quality threshold of 20%, 64/88 (77%) HCC and 37/48 (77%) liver profiles were judged as having relatively good quality data with comparable inter-sample correlation. Inter-sample correlation coefficient, as a measure to detect outlier profiles due to poor RNA quality, was also lower in AS-FFPE (0.4~0.9) compared to FC-FFPE (0.6~1.0). In the genome-wide profiling analysis, previously identified molecular subclasses of HCC tumors were reproduced in 67/83 (81%) samples, which was improved to 43/48 (90%) samples when we focused on statistically confident predictions (p<0.05). A 186-gene prognostic signature in liver cirrhosis was reproduced in 32/47 (68%) samples, which was slightly improved to 11/16 (69%) when focused on statistically significant predictions. Conclusions We observed decay of genome-wide transcriptional profiles in AS-FFPE tissues in quantitative manner. However, disease classification was still possible, which suggests potential of AS-FFPE material for clinical diagnosis and prognosis.

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Quantitative Gene Expression Profiling in Formalin-Fixed Paraffin-Embedded Samples by Affymetrix Microarrays

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