Use of EBUS TBNA for Cell Culture as an Aid to Diagnose Lung Cancer and Lymphoma

Obtaining adequate pathological specimen is essential in the diagnosis of cancer. Ultrasound guided sampling through endo bronchial ultrasound (EBUS) trans bronchial needle aspiration (TBNA) has emerged as a safe and accurate technique in the diagnosis and staging of lung cancer but subtyping and/or genotyping of TBNA samples obtained by convex probe EBUS has long been considered to be limited by the lack of tissue architecture in these small tissue samples. The performance of small tissue samples in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) subtyping has been proven to be accurate in modern pathology practice adopting cell blocks and immunohistochemistry (IHC), reducing the NSCLC not otherwise specified rate for needle aspiration samples to 8-23%. It has also shown recently a promising result in work up of mediastinal lymphadenopathy when lymphoma is suspected. It is thought that at times EBUS TBNA sample is still inadequate for further essential testing for diagnostic and therapeutic purpose and enhancing the yield is possibly by cell culture will not only be useful for diagnosing lung cancer and lymphoma but also will provide material for future research study. We have therefore developed a research proposal in collaboration with scientists at the biomedical research laboratory at Imperial College London, who have excellent record in basic scientific research and currently involved in similar research on cell culture for other type of diseases.