Autopsies, fingerprinting, ballistics and DNA analysis were her world before leaving Portugal and joining IBBL. But, in addition to her post-graduate degree in forensic science, Sónia Frasquilho also studied anatomy for 4 years. This knowledge and experience with human organs and tissues meant that Sonia fit right in with IBBL’s clinical department. Here, she tells us what it is like to be a pathology assistant at IBBL.
Interview by Sarah Weiler (SW)
SW: What does the work as a pathology assistant entail?
Sónia Frasquilo: At IBBL we collect, process and store different tissue samples, mainly lung and colon, for our collaborators, but also for our own internal collection. As a pathology assistant I am responsible for the collection and processing of these human tissues. When a patient agrees to donate a sample of his tissue for research, I go into the operating room where the patient is having his surgery and bring the removed tissue back to our laboratory for processing. This is possible because the CHL (Centre Hospitalier de Luxembourg) is just a few meters away. In other hospitals, we prepare the samples on site, so they don’t deteriorate in the time it takes to get here. Usually, we collect samples for diagnosis and samples for research. Diagnosis is of course always the priority.
SW: What happens to these tissues after they are collected?
Sónia Frasquilo: For our routine processing, both diagnostic and research samples are treated in the same way. The tissue samples are collected in a fixative that prevents decay. Then, we need to remove the water from the tissue and replace it with paraffin to solidify it. To that end, the tissue is embedded in a block of paraffin from which we can cut off very thin sections. These are then prepared on a microscope slide and stained for our pathologist, who does the diagnosis and sends the results to the surgeon and the National Health Laboratory (LNS).
For certain projects, especially our lung collection, we also do intra-operative pathology consultations to help guide the clinician during surgery. In these cases, a small part of tissue is collected and has to be frozen, dissected, stained and interpreted within 20 minutes. It is a big responsibility, because the surgeon decides how to proceed with the surgery based upon these pathology results.
SW: Most of these samples go to IBBL’s collaborators working in cancer research but you also have your own collection for IBBL’s biospecimen research. What research project are you currently working on?
Sónia Frasquilo: In addition to our routine processing we can perform a range of other techniques, for example staining by immunohistochemistry or in situ hybridisation. We are trying to develop quality control tools based on these techniques to evaluate the quality of the samples. That way we can assure our clients that our samples are of good quality and discard those samples that may have been compromised. These quality control tools can for example be an antibody or a batch of antibodies that can tell us if a tissue has been detrimentally affected by the time of fixation or ischemia. Inherently, this is quite complex because tissues are so heterogeneous and it is challenging to find antibodies that work in the same way in all of them.
SW: Which part of your work do you like most?
Sónia Frasquilo: At IBBL, I really like the team. People come from all kinds of different backgrounds and we can learn a lot from each other. On top of that, the senior scientists and pathologists are committed to help younger ones grow and enhance their skills and knowledge.
The second part that I really enjoy about my work, is the idea of helping patients. At the biobank, we are not in direct contact with the patients, which I miss sometimes, coming from a clinical background. But I know that my work can make a difference to these patients and I try to always work as meticulously, but also, as fast as possible, because I know that for a cancer patient it is important to get the diagnosis and start treatment as early as possible.