Clinical Trial Cutting Requests

Yes, however, Penn’s current policy is to only send blocks if the study will not accept slides, punches, or rolls.

It is the ID for the specimen you are interested in for your patient. Please see for this more information. It is not an MRN number.

• If not designated in the pathology report and in an effort to adhere to your study's guidelines, H&E stained slides and tissue blocks might need to be reviewed by the pathologist to select an appropriate tissue block.

• Block selection will affect turn-around time (TAT).

Lab staff review the study protocol if they need to double-check the study guidelines or if there is an issue with tissue availability.

Molecular cutting involves cleaning equipment between specimens to minimize cross-contamination. It is recommended when the tissue will be used for molecular analysis or other sensitive downstream applications involving nucleic acids.

Yes, but please email PathTDSC@pennmedicine.upenn.edu before submitting the survey to discuss feasibility.

• Outside blocks are tissue blocks that came to Penn from another institution.

• Penn designates the accession number of these blocks with HC, CC, NO, OS, or CC at the start of the accession number.

• Outside blocks from cases signed out more than a few months prior will likely have been returned to the original institution.

In most cases, Penn only receives glass slides from outside providers. Therefore, there are no unstained slides available at Penn for your study.

• You have two options:

  • Request the block from the original institution and have it sent to PCSC to cut

  • Request the outside institution cut the material needed for your study

• Typical requests take approximately 2 weeks.

• This is contingent on the current workload, tissue material availability, block selection, and billing issues.

For RUSH requests, we make every effort to send the request out within one week. This relies on collaboration between the requestor and the person in our lab working on the request.

Please email pbrhelpdesk@pennmedicine.upenn.edu to get your fund added or if you need to make any alterations to the fund.

Please email pathtdsc@pennmedicine.upenn.edu to get assistance.

You can enter a ‘0’ if you do not have a UPCC number.

You can enter a ‘0’ if you do not have a 26-digit Fin Mis #.

The material can be mailed to you via FedEx or UPS. We prefer that an air bill be attached to the survey in the section “Ship to Me.” However, you can upload a document with your FedEx or UPS account information, and we can create a label on our end for an extra charge.

For us to bill you, you must create a PennKey for the PI. You can create a PennKey here. Please review this guide with any PennKey-related questions.