"Rapid autopsies" are being used in a race against the clock to research cancer's final effects within the body immediately after death, Kaiser Health News reported.
Kaiser Health said rapid autopsies seek to obtain tumor tissue immediately after death before it has a chance to degrade. Scientists hope that such samples will help them understand how the cancer became resistant to certain therapies.
"It's the power of sampling over the entire body at the same time," Dr. Jody Hooper, director of Johns Hopkins Medicine's Legacy Gift Rapid Autopsy Program in Baltimore, told Kaiser Health. He said he now conducts about one rapid autopsy a month.
The rapid autopsy research being done at Ohio State University joins that of other medical centers around the country hoping get the upper hand on cancer.
"People are recognizing that cancer is more heterogeneous than we realize," said Dr. Sameek Roychowdhury, a medical scientist at OSU's Comprehensive Cancer Center, per Kaiser Health. "Different parts of your body may have different cancer cells, even though they originated from the same cancer."
Rapid autopsies are performed on bodies donated to the university as part of its study called the Body Donation for Cancer Research, launched in 2016 by the university's Comprehensive Cancer Center, Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and the Richard J. Solove Research Institute, according to the Columbus Dispatch.
"Asking someone who has terminal cancer to donate their body to research can be a sensitive subject," Roychowdhury told the Dispatch, adding that even if patients are willing their loved ones and family members might object. "There is no risk or cost involved, but it has to be done in a respectful way."
Roychowdhury’s team had completed 17 rapid autopsies as of February, with another seven patients enrolled. He said he hopes that body donation becomes more widely used so researchers can apply their new knowledge to helping others who are fighting cancer, the Dispatch said.
"This is helping us shape how we develop this new drug," Roychowdhury told Kaiser Health News. "How can we make a better drug? Or can we make a better drug combination?"
Kaiser Health reported that University of Washington researchers have used rapid autopsies to study prostate cancer since 1991, while the University of Nebraska Medical Center started a similar program in 2000. In all, there are 14 similar programs in the U.S., Kaiser News reported.
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