Molecular pathology, where it is needed
Prognostic signatures, genomic profiling and liquid biopsy from an accredited institute for pathology. Reports in English, signed by a pathologist you can reach.
For decades, tumours with similar morphology were treated in similar ways. Immunohistochemistry allowed finer distinctions between tumours that look alike but behave differently. Molecular pathology goes one step further: it reads the alterations within the tumour itself and makes treatment a decision about the individual patient, not about the group.
Molecular markers answer three distinct questions, and it is worth keeping them apart:
- Diagnostic
- They sharpen the entity. Two morphologically similar tumours can be separated by their molecular signature — with consequences for behaviour and treatment. At times they point to an underlying familial tumour syndrome.
- Prognostic
- They say something about the aggressiveness of the tumour and thus about its likely course. They give the clinician a sense of how decisively to act — and when restraint is defensible.
- Predictive
- They show which treatment is likely to work in this patient. Whether a targeted agent is an option, whether immunotherapy holds promise, whether resistance has already emerged.
Our focus lies on the prognostic and predictive questions — where a molecular finding changes a treatment decision directly.
Whether a patient benefits from this diagnostics still depends heavily on where they are treated. The methods are approved and reimbursable in many countries — but they are not offered everywhere. A patient treated far from a molecular pathology laboratory receives therapy based on clinical parameters, while elsewhere a signature carries the same decision.
This is not a technical problem but a geographical one — and therefore solvable. A paraffin block can be shipped. So can a tube of plasma. Material need not be examined where it was taken.
We accept material from Europe and the adjoining regions and report on it to German accreditation standards — under the same conditions as material from the Chiemgau. We clarify the preanalytics with you beforehand, so that the first sample is not the one where something goes wrong.
Which question stands before your patient?
The value of molecular diagnostics rests on two conditions, both of which lie with the pathologist: that the right material is selected, and that the report can be trusted. Neither can be delegated to a machine.
For that reason, the same specialist in pathology who assesses the material is the one who signs at the end. The institute has been accredited to DIN EN ISO/IEC 17020 by the DAkkS since 2006 — the German accreditation system, which ranks among the most exacting in Europe in laboratory medicine.
If a value falls outside the validated range, we do not report it. A figure we do not trust ourselves does not belong in a report. You will hear from us in that case.
Before you send the first case
Talk to us about material, shipping and preanalytics. Half an hour beforehand spares the query on the unclear case — and makes sure the first report lands.