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.

Other Questions

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Would we need to set up a Vet Portal for each doctor or just our hospital?

If you would like to set up accounts for the hospital, please send us a list of doctors' names and email addresses as well as any support staff who would need access to the Vet Portal. Each doctor can also register independently on the Vet Portal. Please note the report will be sent to the ordering veterinarian's email, not to all hospital accounts.

For the blood tube submission– Do you request that on every patient, even if they don't have a leukemic component? And what type of blood tube do you request we send the sample in?

We require at least 2 mL of whole blood in an EDTA-treated tube.

Can the blood sample be frozen or refrigerated before shipping?

The blood sample can be refrigerated before shipping. Please DO NOT freeze the blood sample.

Is there any reason to believe that submitting another sample to you would provide any additional information or possible changes in treatment protocols now that we are almost 4 months into the treatment plan?

We would suggest you submit another FNA and blood samples to us WHEN the patient's lymphoma relapses. Relapse of lymphoma means that the cancer develops a resistance to certain chemo drugs in use. When this happens, the relapsed cancer cells are usually different from the ones investigated in the naive status, which led to different drug response predictions to the tested drugs. Therefore, it would be better to get new tumor samples and find out what are the new preferred drugs and which of the used drugs still remain effective or became resistant for the relapsed lymphoma. However, the best scenario is to maintain clinical remission for as long a period of time so that you don’t have to order another service from us! If a second service is needed, we offer a 50% discount for returning patients.

If I send samples from multiple patients, do I get a discount?

No, but after the first Personalized Prediction Profile service for a given patient, all subsequent Personalized Prediction Profile services for that patient are discounted.