How a New Kind of Autopsy Is Helping in the Fight Against Cancer

After Keith Beck died of bile duct cancer last year, family members said, more than 900 people showed up to pay respects to the popular athletic director at the University of Findlay in northwestern Ohio. Many were former students who recalled acts of kindness during Beck’s nearly 30-year career: $20 given to a kid who was broke, textbooks bought for a student whose parents were going through bankruptcy, a spot cleared to sleep on Beck’s living room floor. But few knew about Beck’s final gesture of generosity. The 59-year-old had agreed to a “rapid autopsy,” a procedure conducted within hours of his death on March 28, 2017, so that scientists could learn as much as possible from the cancer that killed him. “He was 100 percent for it,” recalled his ex-wife, Nancy Beck, 63, who cared for Beck at the end of his life. “It wasn’t the easiest thing to do, but it was important.” Beck donated his body to a rapid-autopsy research study at the Ohio State University, part of a small but growing effort by more than a dozen medical centers nationwide. The idea is to obtain tumor tissue immediately after death — before it has a chance to degrade. Rapid autopsy also allows scientists to get larger tumor samples than they could from a traditional biopsy taken while a person is alive — and to keep tissue alive for further testing. Scientists say such samples are the key to understanding the genetics of cancers that sprea...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Cancer healthytime Source Type: news