Weak Link in the Cancer Treatment Chain: Low-Quality Biopsies

January 22, 2016

Histopathology (commonly known as ‘biopsy’) is the gold standard in cancer diagnosis and now frequently used to identify the best treatment regime using genetic analysis. It seems that 1 in 5 samples are of poor quality and cannot be used for genetic analysis. This was particularly true for samples coming from centres far away from specialised centres where the level of expertise tends to be lower.