Overview
Pathology is the study of the mechanism of disease. Diagnostic histopathology is of paramount importance for patients’ management. Through a combination of morphological analysis, pattern recognition and input from ancillary techniques, pathologists can make reliable and reproducible diagnosis, which are still used to guide the surgeon’s hands. In recent years, a greater demand for prognostic factors has reshaped the role of pathology. Currently, the role of pathology encompasses not only achieving an accurate diagnosis, but also providing a number of prognostic and predictive factors, such as classification, grade, stage and molecular markers.
The overall objective of the group is to utilise traditional histopathology techniques in conjunction with molecular techniques to further the understanding of the disease process.
Our laboratory
The laboratory, based in the Royal Marsden Hospital, runs as a core facility within the Breakthrough Research Centre to provide a histopathology service to the centre and some of our external collaborators. Our aim is to provide a high quality service that meets the needs of our scientists. We provide traditional histopathology techniques as well as providing expertise in designing, creating, cutting and staining of tissue microarrays and CISH technology, optimisation of novel antibodies both manually and using our Discovery Platform.
The facility aims to make molecular pathology accessible to everyone, whether they are performing their own experiments or using the lab as a service to generate data. The pathology team will all contribute to the facility with their own individual projects as well as supporting the Breakthrough Research Centre’s work. The pathology core facility will work closely with the other teams and the microarray facility with clinical resources (such as archival tissue banks and biopsies) and other high throughput technologies (such as tissue arrays) contributing significantly to the translational research programme within the Breakthrough Research Centre.
Staffing
The core facility’s major strength is that it is staffed by 2 state-registered Biomedical Scientists and a Post Doctoral Scientist who are qualified in Histopathology. The Core Facility is supported by Dr Jorge Reis-Filho who analyses tissue microarrays/Immunohistochemistry and advises/confirms on antibody optimisation and fluorescent and chromogenic in situ hybridisation.
The decision of projects taken on by the core facility is made by a core facility panel.
For further information contact Kay Savage, histopathology facility manager.
