Department of Pathology and Cell Biology, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, New York.
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, New York.
Cancer Cytopathol. 2019 May;127(5):316-324. doi: 10.1002/cncy.22133. Epub 2019 Apr 26.
Cell blocks represent one of several cytology preparations, and play a significant role in providing tissue for ancillary studies, including immunohistochemistry and molecular testing. To the authors' knowledge, there currently is no standardized cell block processing method, and cellular yield often is suboptimal. To overcome the shortcomings of available methods, the authors developed a novel disposable cell block device, XCellent, that uses centrifugation to collect cells into a sample chamber. The sample chamber contains and protects the specimen during tissue processing and also is embedded and sectioned. The primary objectives of the current study were to compare cellular yield, cytomorphological detail, and processing times of HistoGel and XCellent.
Split sample testing of primarily fluid specimens was performed. Group 1 comprised large-volume and/or cloudy fluids and group 2 was residual samples in PreservCyt solution. Two cell blocks, 1 HistoGel cell block and 1 XCellent cell block, were processed from each sample. Cellularity was assessed using computerized image analysis and cytomorphology from 1+ to 3+. Processing times for 16 cell blocks also were recorded.
A total of 50 cell blocks (25 HistoGel samples and 25 XCellent samples) were prepared. On average, cell blocks prepared using XCellent were 371% more cellular than those prepared with HistoGel and had better cytomorphology. Less preparation time was required for bulk processing of XCellent cell blocks (11 minutes) compared with the same quantity of bulk processed using HistoGel (38 minutes).
XCellent provides an alternative cell block processing technique that offers high cellular yield and cytomorphology. In addition, the method uses the standard centrifugation process, which integrates into the existing cytology laboratory workflow.
细胞块是几种细胞学标本之一，在提供组织进行辅助研究（包括免疫组织化学和分子检测）方面发挥着重要作用。据作者所知，目前尚无标准化的细胞块处理方法，细胞产量通常不理想。为了克服现有方法的缺点，作者开发了一种新型的一次性细胞块设备 XCellent，它利用离心将细胞收集到样品室中。样品室在组织处理过程中容纳和保护标本，同时也进行包埋和切片。本研究的主要目的是比较 HistoGel 和 XCellent 的细胞产量、细胞形态细节和处理时间。
对主要为液体标本进行了拆分样本测试。第 1 组包括大容量和/或混浊的液体，第 2 组是 PreservCyt 溶液中的剩余样本。每个样本均制作 2 个细胞块，1 个 HistoGel 细胞块和 1 个 XCellent 细胞块。使用计算机图像分析和 1+至 3+的细胞形态对细胞密度进行评估。还记录了 16 个细胞块的处理时间。
共制备了 50 个细胞块（25 个 HistoGel 样本和 25 个 XCellent 样本）。平均而言，使用 XCellent 制备的细胞块比使用 HistoGel 制备的细胞块多 371%的细胞，且具有更好的细胞形态。与使用 HistoGel 批量处理相同数量的细胞块（38 分钟）相比，XCellent 细胞块的批量处理所需的准备时间更少（11 分钟）。
XCellent 提供了一种替代的细胞块处理技术，可提供高细胞产量和细胞形态。此外，该方法使用标准的离心过程，可集成到现有的细胞学实验室工作流程中。
