Researchers led by Qiagen's Daniel Groelz write in Experimental and Molecular Pathology that the PAXgene Tissue System does not chemically alter RNA upon fixation and stabilization. They compared the RINs of FFPE, PAXgene-fixed, and fresh-frozen tissue samples and found that, in their model, "processing, which included embedding in low melting point paraffin, had only a minor effect on RNA integrity in PAXgene fixed/stabilized tissue but a moderate effect on RNA integrity in formalin-fixed tissue." Further, they report that RNA from FFPE samples was more likely to have chemical modifications than RNA from the PAXgene samples. "While RNA with acceptable RIN scores could be isolated from both FFPE and PFPE tissue, only RNA from PFPE tissue was comparable to RNA from fresh frozen tissue in real time RT PCR assays and for all amplifications of transcript sequences from 109 to 610 nt," the researchers write. PAXgene was developed by PreAnalytiX, which is a BD-Qiagen joint venture.

Also in Experimental and Molecular Pathology, Josef Wanninger from Regensburg University Hospital in Germany and his colleagues report on their lipidomic study of adiponectin deficient mice. As "adiponectin-deficient mice may compensate for adiponectin deficiency to a certain degree," they examined "the expression of lipogenic genes and lipid composition" in adiponectin-deficient mice. Adiponectin deficiency, Wanniger et al. write, is associated with different lipid classes in the liver and "lower levels of cholesteryl ester, stearate and eventually glucosylceramide may protect the liver from metabolic injury and may partly compensate for adiponectin deficiency."