Feasibility study of elemental analysis of large population of formalin fixed paraffin embedded tissue samples – preliminary results

Abstract The goal of this study was to check the repeatability of changes of elemental composition of tissues introduced by formalin fixation followed by paraffin embedding (FFPE) – standard processing protocol used in histopathology. To achieve that goal two series of ten samples of quasi-homogeneous swine liver samples – lyophilised and FFPE processed – were compared in terms of statistical dispersion of their elemental concentrations. Total Reflection X-Ray Fluorescence (TXRF) was used for quantification of K, Ca, Mn, Fe, Cu, Zn, Se Br, Rb and Sr in samples after their acid digestion. It has been shown that relative standard deviation introduced by the statistical dispersion of the FFPE processing typically does not exceed 30% which may open up the possibility of analysis of large population of archival tissues.