809094 Biomarker Identification in Fracture Healing (experiment #3808a mRNA)

The specific genes that distinguish normal fracture healing from abnormal healing or nonunion in humans are unknown. This study explored global RNA expression in remnant bone fragments from acutely injured patients undergoing open primary fracture repair surgery. These data will be compared to blood samples collected from acutely injured subjects, chronic nonunion subjects, and a panel of healthy volunteers. We used microarrays to do a global comparison across bone fragments collected from different patients, and different bones. We also evaluated the role of remnant bone preparation which was either immediate freezing in liquid nitrogen or heat stabilized with the Denator Stabilizer(TM) system. Remnant bone fragments were collected intraoperatively by the staff of the Cooperative Human Tissue Network Eastern Division (CHTN-ED https://www.chtneast.org/). Samples were split for processing as frozen in liquid nitrogen vs heat stabilization followed by annotation and storage until the time of RNA extraction.