Hi, I agree with the previous writers. You can store your tumor piece at 4° for up to 48h in medium. Also, you could try organotypic slices made by a tissue chopper or a vibratome (see our papers for example- please get back to me if you have any questions!). This way, you can easily culture your tumor as 350 µm thick slices on membrane inserts and use them afterwards for transplantation- maybe even right from the culture without any further manipulation. Good luck!

Kind regards

You have several options.

You can dissociate the tissue mechanically or with enzymes, and cryogenically freeze it as you would do with any cell culture.  5-10% DMSO in Media (DMEM or other) with or without FBS.  The type of media will depend on the tumor tissue type.

Alternatively, you could dissociate it and culture it in media, similarly to any tumor cell culture.  Again, the type of media and culture conditions will vary depending on the tumor tissue type.  You can also culture the tissue as an "explant culture", where you cut the tissue into small pieces (1mM thick, or smaller) and culture them in the same way, simply not dissociated.

Long term cyrogenic storage is optimal in liquid nitrogen.  Short term (a week, up to a month or two) is sufficient at -80C. 

What applications do you plan to do with the tissue after a week?

It would depend on the tissue size. If the tissue pieces can pass through a pippete you can probably freeze it the same as you do with cells. Alternativelly, you could isolate the cells with collagenase or accutase and then freeze them as always. This would work much better, actually. Why do you need it a week later? Another way would be to xenotransplant the tissue in immunodeficient mice, subcutaneous or orthotopic.

Good luck

You can store the tissue in DMEM at -20 or -80. but you need to change the media for every 48 hrs. However, this is some what risky because the tissue may get the contamination.

If you want to isolate RNA from the tissue you can preserve in RNAlater solution ( Invitrogen, USA) for  6 months at -80.

Thanks much to everyone for your valuable inputs. The plan is to preserve it for a short time and then implant the tissue in animal model for tumor induction studies. Earlier tumor "cells" were injected and the said tissue was obtained. However, the success rate was less (only few animals developed tumor) mainly because the cells were lost (washed) due to blood circulation. Therefore, I was wondering if I can implant a small piece of the harvested tissue as such so that i can "contain" the tissue localized upon surgically implantation in the target organ.

Yes, Giridharan.  You can certainly transplant small (minced) pieces of tumor tissue into mice.  This is a preferred method my some investigators as it theoretically better preserves the tumor architecture and heterogenous cell population.  

Keep in mind that not all tumor specimens will proliferate in culture or in vivo.  A less than 100% success rate can be expected.  For the mice that did develop tumors after implanting, harvest those xenograft tumors and establish a new culture from them, or mince them up and re-implant them into new mice.   

Here is a reference for serial transplantation of tumor tissue:

Giannini et al. 2005, Neuro Oncology, Patient tumor EGFR and PDGFRA gene amplifications retained in an invasive intracranial xenograft model of GBM.

Although the optimal condition is always to immediately culture or xenotransplant the tumor tissue as soon as it is harvested, another option for short term storage (up to 24 hrs) of fresh tumor tissue is storage in DMEM media (or other media) at 4 degrees celsius (refrigerated).  Tumor tissue can remain viable for up to 24hrs under those conditions, ready for culture or xenotransplantation.

Good Luck.

Excellent thanks Dr. York. The information is very useful.

Hi, I agree with the previous writers. You can store your tumor piece at 4° for up to 48h in medium. Also, you could try organotypic slices made by a tissue chopper or a vibratome (see our papers for example- please get back to me if you have any questions!). This way, you can easily culture your tumor as 350 µm thick slices on membrane inserts and use them afterwards for transplantation- maybe even right from the culture without any further manipulation. Good luck!

Kind regards

Thank you all very much.

Dear Felicitas Rapp ,

I have the same issue (and exactly I am working with vibratome slices). I know this question was trending 4 yrs ago, but could you please send me your related paper?