Postmortem examinations of patients, where the procedure commences shortly after death (rapid autopsies), are becoming an important scientific engine for understanding mechanisms of disease progression and drug resistance, especially in this era of personalized medicine and immunotherapy.

The Research Autopsy Program (RAP) Shared Resource (SR) conducts rapid research autopsies on patients who die of cancer on an urgent basis to collect benign and malignant tissues to support the research of SKCCC members and other Johns Hopkins University (JHU) and outside investigators. Currently, the RAP participants include research teams for melanoma, pediatric neural tumors, pancreatic, ovarian, kidney, prostate, breast, lung, sarcomas, colorectal and other genitourinary cancers.

The goals are to improve our understanding of tumor cell intrinsic and tumor micro-environmental molecular alterations associated with disease progression, heterogeneity, and drug resistance, including resistance to biological agents and immune-therapeutics by aiding SKCCC and other investigators by providing administrative, technical, and logistical support for performing rapid research autopsies on patients with all tumor types.

Leadership

Director
Angelo De Marzo, M.D., Ph.D.