Tumor Touch Imprints as Source for Whole Genome Analysis of Neuroblastoma Tumors

Tumor touch imprints (TTIs) are routinely used for the molecular diagnosis of neuroblastomas by interphase fluorescence in-situ hybridization (I-FISH). However, to enable an up-to-date molecular diagnosis of neuroblastomas and to identify new markers to refine risk and therapy stratification methods, whole genome approaches are demanded. We tested whether an ultra-high density SNP array platform identifying copy number changes of varying sizes down to few exons can be applied to detect genomic changes on DNA extracted from TTIs. DNA was extracted from TTIs of 44 neuroblastoma, 1 Ewing tumor, 1 desmoplastic small round cell tumor, 1 medulloblastoma and 1 osteosarcoma. The DNAs were processed with the Cytoscan HD platform.