Scarless biopsy

In non-melanoma skin cancer, performing a biopsy followed by its histopathological examination is the only method for confirming clinical diagnosis of the tumour. Skin biopsy is not always safe and may lead to complications such as bleeding, wound infection, and scarring. Therefore, the development of non-invasive skin tissue sampling technique without the need for traditional biopsy will revolutionise early diagnosis and management of the skin tumours.
At the Department of Dermatology at Westmead, we recently tested the feasibility of using Tape Stripping (TS) for the collection and extraction of proteins from the stratum corneum layer of the skin and its use for subsequent diagnostic biomarker analysis using proteomic techniques. We successfully collected and extracted human stratum corneum proteins from five patients with actinic keratosis (AK) through sequential application and removal of adhesive stripping tapes on the lesional skin surface and their matched normal skin. Mass-spectrometry analyis of the TS samples followed by bioinformatics analysis of the MS data confirmed that the types of proteins identified and the molecular and biological pathways those proteins are representing greatly overlap with those identified by the MS analysis of Formalin-fixed and paraffin embedded (FFPE) AK tissue samples.
Our pilot study is the first to demonstrate the application of a non-invasive method for sampling and extraction of proteins from AK lesions for subsequent proteomic investigations. Our department is aiming to expand the application of this technique to other tumours types including cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, Bowens disease and melanoma in the future.
Written by Ali Azimi