Amyloid Proteins From Medullary Thyroid Cancer and Laryngeal Amyloidosis

This is an anonymous, voluntary inclusion, laboratory based, basic science research study. Appropriate patients who meet the inclusion criteria and complete the consent process will be asked to donate a small sample of excess tumour tissue after the completion of their surgical procedure. This tissue will be transferred to the research laboratory in Leeds University for analysis and subject to a variety of investigations and scientific procedures to achieve the study objectives. These include: 1. \- amyloid extraction by tissue homogenization and centrifugation as already documented in the literature. 2. \- mass spectrometry analysis to identify and characterize the most prominent proteins present in the amyloid deposits and their possible post-translational modifications. 3. \- Transmission Electron Microscopy to characterize at the gross features of the extracted amyloid fibrils at low resolution (\>20Å). This relatively simple procedure allows for quick characterization of the samples in order to optimize them for Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) and Cryo-Electron Microscopy (Cryo-EM). 4. \- Atomic Force microscopy to characterize helical parameters of the amyloid fibrils needed to calculate the structure from Cryo-EM data. 5. \- Cryo-Electron Microscopy to elucidate the structure of the amyloids extracted from tissue affected in each disease