SpeciCare Releases ‘Before the Biopsy,’ a New Patient Guide to Biopsy Tissue Preservation
The way you preserve your biopsy tissue can open the doors to advanced testing & treatment or close them forever. A
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The way you preserve your biopsy tissue can open the doors to advanced testing & treatment or close them forever.
GAINESVILLE, GA, UNITED STATES, July 27, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — SpeciCare today released “Before the Biopsy”, a free patient guide that explains why the tissue removed during a biopsy or surgery may be the single most valuable asset a cancer patient will ever have — and why the century-old standard way that tissue is handled can quietly close doors to advanced testing, targeted therapy, and clinical trial eligibility before a patient even knows those doors exist. The guide is available at no cost at specicare.com/ebook.
Precision oncology has transformed in the last two decades. Genomic sequencing, targeted therapies, immunotherapy, ex-vivo drug sensitivity testing, and personalized cancer vaccines are now part of routine conversations in cancer centers across the country. But the default method used to preserve tumor tissue — formalin fixation and paraffin embedding, known as FFPE — is a technique that predates every one of those advances by roughly a century.
FFPE was designed so a pathologist could look at cells under a microscope and make a diagnosis. It does that job well. What it was never designed to do is protect the fragile molecular material that today’s most advanced testing depends on. Formalin cross-links and degrades DNA and RNA, and the process cannot be reversed. Once tissue is fixed, it is fixed.
For most patients, the biopsy is the largest and highest-quality tissue sample they will ever have. It is also, in most cases, a one-time opportunity.
The Conversation Patients Are Never Invited Into
The more pressing problem is not scientific — it is one of consent and communication. Preservation is treated as a back-of-house laboratory workflow, not a clinical decision. Consent forms routinely grant broad institutional authority over residual tissue. Patients sign them in the most stressful week of their lives, without ever being told there was an alternative worth asking about.
Before the Biopsy is written to close that gap. It walks patients and caregivers through what actually happens to tissue after it leaves the operating room, how preservation methods differ, which advanced tests and trials require higher-quality samples, and — most importantly — the specific questions to ask a surgical or oncology team before a procedure, while options are still open.
The guide covers:
Why first-line treatment failure makes preserved tissue a contingency plan, not a luxury
How FFPE and cryopreservation differ, in plain language
Which advanced tests and clinical trials will not accept fixed tissue
What patients actually control regarding their own specimens — and what they give away by default
The exact questions to ask, and when to ask them
Why Payers Should Be Paying Attention
The downstream cost argument is straightforward. When a preserved sample cannot support the testing a patient later needs, the system absorbs the consequences: repeat biopsies and the procedural risk that comes with them, additional imaging and pathology, delays while new tissue is obtained, and time spent on therapies that better molecular information might have redirected earlier. Preservation decisions made in the first hour after a procedure can shape spending for years afterward.
“Patients are asked to make difficult decisions about surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. They are almost never asked about the one thing that determines what options remain available to them later. That is not a failure of any individual clinician — it is a consent conversation that has not kept pace with the science.”
— Ken Dixon, MD, FACS, Founder, SpeciCare
SpeciCare’s position is not that cryopreservation replaces standard pathology. Diagnosis comes first, always. The argument is that after the pathologist has what is needed for diagnosis, remaining tissue should be preserved in a way that keeps future options open — and that the patient should be part of deciding that.
Availability
Before the Biopsy is available as a free download at specicare.com/ebook. No purchase or account is required. Patients facing a scheduled biopsy or resection are encouraged to review it before their procedure date, as most preservation options are time-sensitive and cannot be applied retroactively.
About SpeciCare
SpeciCare is a precision oncology company focused on cancer tissue cryopreservation and patient-directed biospecimen management. Working alongside patients and their care teams, SpeciCare preserves viable tumor tissue so it remains suitable for genomic profiling, ex-vivo drug sensitivity testing, immunotherapy development, and clinical trial participation. The company was founded by Ken Dixon, MD, FACS, a board-certified cancer surgeon. Learn more at specicare.com.
Scott Ford
Specicare
+1 417-230-7082
scott.ford@specicare.com
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