Pathology and Cellular Imaging Core

The M.H. Mohseni Urology Institute of Urological Sciences’ Molecular Pathology core facility offers clinical grade, high throughput analytical services with fast turnaround times. Our unique access to live human tumour tissues allows for the identification of new tumour targets, validation of function, and the development of tumour models in our Functional Genomics core facility.

 

Background

The M.H. Mohseni Urology Institute of Urological Sciences has been collecting human human urological tumours for well over 20 years. The process of collecting and bio-banking these specimens has been undertaken with an institutionally approved consent form and each individual specimen has been consented for research purposes within the institution. MIUS implements high ethical standards to protect patient’s confidentiality in this process.

All the experiments conformed to the principle of University of British Columbia, Office of Research Ethics, Clinical Research Ethics Board, with assigned UBC CREB NUMBER.

The CREB procedures/policies correspond to, and therefore comply with the ethical principles that were developed in the Declaration of Helsinki.

Cellular and Molecular Imaging Suite

The Cellular and Molecular Imaging Suite supports the use of state-of-the-art bright field, laser scanning and spinning disk confocal fluorescent microscopic imaging technologies for cellular and subcellular localization studies of molecules and pathways critical to prostate cancer cell growth and survival. These imaging systems are used to monitor cellular expression and localization of proteins, which enable studies of the role of these factors in the regulation of tumour cell growth, survival and differentiation signalling pathways.

Bio-Repository – A Unique Research Resource

The M.H. Mohseni Urology Institute of Urological Sciences has a tumour bank that contains well over 3000 prostate, bladder, kidney, and testicular tumour specimens (both fresh frozen and paraffin embedded). This tumour bank has an integrated database that is overseen by a full-time coordinator, a full-time research pathologist, and staff.

Expertise and Services

The pathology core provides comprehensive, rapid molecular pathology services ranging from standard histology to custom work such as TMA construction, antibody validation, and genomic analysis including CISH and FISH, in addition to providing the pathology expertise required for scoring and interpretation of results.

Services

Our molecular pathology and applied genomics core is supported by a world class team of molecular pathologists and offers a broad range of analytical services to the public and private sectors including:

• Immunohistochemistry (Single, Double, and Multiplex staining)
• In situ immunofluorescence
• In situ hybridization (FISH & CISH)
• In situ Toxicology Analysis
• In situ Proximity-ligation Analysis

Tissue Micro Array (TMA) construction

High-throughput scanning and Digital Image Analysis (Image storage service, Remote VPN access)

Whole Mount Tissue Analysis

Resources

The M.H. Mohseni Urology Institute of Urological Sciences’ collection includes the world’s largest repository of the following:

• pre- and post-treated urogenital tumours
• tumours stratified from low to high risk (matched primary and metastatic tumours)
• treatment resistant cancers fully annotated for previous therapies, responses, stage and prognostic indicators, biomarkers etc.

An established bank of more than 700 human radical prostatectomy specimens stored at -156 degrees centigrade and in paraffin blocks

More than 1,000 archived prostatectomy specimens from patients with no prior hormone therapy or after variable periods of pre-treatment with one, three, or eight months of neo-adjuvant hormone therapy prior to surgery.

The M.H. Mohseni Urology Institute of Urological Sciences has also constructed the following:

• Tissue microarrays (TMAs) from post-treated cancer specimens that are useful for high throughput validation of transcriptional profiles.
• TMAs spotted with control normal prostate tissue together with more than 400 individual samples from benign, and Gleason grades of 1 to 5 all linked to clinical correlative data and PSA recurrence rate status.
• A TMA with rare tumours of NEPC and CRPC TURP specimen.
• A unique post-hormone therapy treated TMA consisting of a total of 336 cores from 112 patients treated with no hormone therapy (21), 3-6 (49), and more than 8 (28) months of neo-adjuvant hormone therapy prior to radical prostatectomy, and 14 patients with metastatic castrate resistant prostate cancer.
• TMAs from patients entered into the Canadian Uro-Oncology Group randomized comparative study of 3 vs 8 months of neo-adjuvant hormone therapy, as well as from a multicentre Phase II trial of 70 patients treated with neo-adjuvant hormone plus docetaxel, all with annotated clinical and pathological correlates.
• Various TMAs from bladder and kidney tumours before and after treatment.

Updated: October 10, 2024