Immortalizing the complexity of cancer metastasis: Genetic features of lethal metastatic pancreatic cancer obtained from rapid autopsy

Abstract

The virtual lack of well-characterized metastatic pancreatic cancer tissues for study has limited systematic studies of the metastatic process of this deadly disease. To address this important issue, we have instituted a rapid autopsy protocol for the collection of high quality tissues from patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer, called the Gastrointestinal Cancer Rapid Medical Donation Program (GICRMDP). At the time of preparation of this manuscript, 20 patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer and one patient with metastatic colon cancer have undergone a rapid autopsy in association with the GICRMDP. The average time interval achieved for these 21 patients was 8.0 hours, with more than 500 individual samples of matched high quality primary and metastatic pancreatic cancer tissues, peritoneal/pleural fluid and blood obtained so far. For the first four patients in which the autopsy was performed in