How do I prepare serum and saline tube?

If you do not have our proprietary media tubes handy at the moment, please use the serum and saline protocol from the CSU Hemapathology Lab:

  1. Place 1ml of saline (.9%, LRS, Norm R) into a no-additive, white-top or red-top tube (plain tube with no additives or serum separator).
  2. Add .1 ml of serum from the patient, or another healthy animal of the same species, to the saline in the white-top or red-top tube.Aspirate using suction.Gently squirt contents into the tube containing the saline and serum mixture.
  3. Rinse syringe by drawing up saline and serum mixture and gently squirting it back into the tube. Don’t make bubbles.
  4. Repeat aspiration and rinsing multiple times until solution is no longer transparent. A turbid solution usually indicates adequate cellularity for flow cytometry testing.

Other Questions

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How long can the media tubes be outside of that temperature before going bad?

We will send you another batch of media tubes you could use. Please make the supply request on the Vet Portal > Request Supplies page.

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What type of sample is needed – just aspirates and a typical flow sample?

We need about 10 million cancer cells to run the full chemosensitivity panel so we ask that you conduct an aggressive woodpecker style FNA, poking as many nodes as possible and putting the cells into our proprietary media tubes (ensures we receive live cells), then of course we need a whole blood sample (2mL).

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Do you test "rescue" drugs as well?

Yes, many of the 13 anticancer drugs we provide predictions for are used for rescue therapy. The drugs we test against are: L-Asparaginase, Mitoxantrone, Vincristine, Vinblastine, Doxorubicin, Tanovea, Chlorambucil, Mechlorethamine, Lomustine, Prednisone, Cyclophosphamide, Melphalan, and Dexamethasone.

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How long until I get my ImpriMed report?

Our flow cytometry, PARR, and Immunoprofile reports are emailed to you 3-4 days after receipt of your patient’s sample(s) at our lab. The Personalized Prediction Profile reports are emailed to you 6-7 days after receipt of your patient’s sample(s) at our lab.

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Is there any reason to believe that submitting another sample to you would provide any additional information or possible changes in treatment protocols now that we are almost 4 months into the treatment plan?

We would suggest you submit another FNA and blood samples to us WHEN the patient's lymphoma relapses. Relapse of lymphoma means that the cancer develops a resistance to certain chemo drugs in use. When this happens, the relapsed cancer cells are usually different from the ones investigated in the naive status, which led to different drug response predictions to the tested drugs. Therefore, it would be better to get new tumor samples and find out what are the new preferred drugs and which of the used drugs still remain effective or became resistant for the relapsed lymphoma. However, the best scenario is to maintain clinical remission for as long a period of time so that you don’t have to order another service from us! If a second service is needed, we offer a 50% discount for returning patients.

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