A sound foundation is key

Abstract

In 1990, when I was a young academician, I presented a talk at the International Conference on the Computerized Cytology and Histopathology Laboratory entitled, "Fixation of Specimens for Quantitative DNA Analysis by Slide-Based Fuelgen Microspectrometry."1 I had done some simple, basic work that pointed out the problems of not taking fixation and specimen preparation into account. I did not consider it to be a particularly exciting topic. However, a lasting impression was made upon me by the kind and positive comments by Dr. Leo Koss about the importance of my paper and others like it that focused upon validating one of the "first steps" in marker studies: choosing the optimal specimen preparation and fixation, and defining the variables related to those processes. Dr. Koss talked about the many published papers touting a correlation with some clinical condition that were useless because the variables of specimen preparation and fixation had not been taken into account