I have a patient with likely lymphoma/leukemia. For a blood sample, can I just submit an EDTA blood tube or do I still use the ImpriMed tubes (and if so, how many tubes and is an additional EDTA blood tube still needed with that)?

If the patient is suspected of leukemia, blood collected in the EDTA tube should be fine. If it is lymphoma, we might need FNA from the affected organ/lymph node. We can suggest FNA in ImpriMed media tube (1) and 2ml of blood sample in an EDTA tube.

Other Questions

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Why should I order ImpriMed services?

ImpriMed offers a unique precision oncology service that helps you to find the best anticancer drugs for your patients. ImpriMed directly tests a panel of commonly used anticancer drugs on your patients’ live cells in our A2LA accredited lab. In addition, we continually collect patient outcomes that are updated via regular follow-up with pet parents. As our database grows, so does the performance of our anticancer drug response predictions and your ability to develop a personalized treatment plan for each pet patient. So, when you order an ImpriMed service, you are actively contributing to our dataset and helping to improve cancer care for your patients and the ImpiMed user community.

What does PARR tell me about my patient’s specimen?

PARR, which stands for PCR for Antigen Receptor Rearrangements, is used to discriminate between lymphoma/leukemia and reactive/inflammatory conditions when cytology is equivocal. Our canine PARR assay detects the expansion of B-cell cancer clones by amplifying the VJ region of the immunoglobulin heavy chain gene (IgH) and detects the expansion of T-cell cancer clones by amplifying a region in the T-cell receptor gamma chain gene.

Is this test available outside the US? Could I order the test?

Because we require live, fresh, cancer cells within 24-48 hours of doing a fine needle aspiration, we are ONLY offering our services in North America at this time. If you already had an experience of sending biopsy samples to the US in 24-48 hours, we could discuss the work further. Please contact info@imprimedicine.com.

We have a case coming in today we would really like to submit but don’t have transport media tubes; is there any other method we could do in order to submit a sample, such as aspirating and placing it in tube with serum?

Please use serum and saline that you would normally do when you send to other reference laboratories.

Do you test "rescue" drugs as well?

Yes, many of the 13 anticancer drugs we provide predictions for are used for rescue therapy. The drugs we test against are: L-Asparaginase, Mitoxantrone, Vincristine, Vinblastine, Doxorubicin, Tanovea, Chlorambucil, Mechlorethamine, Lomustine, Prednisone, Cyclophosphamide, Melphalan, and Dexamethasone.