formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue

However, long-term storage of FFPE blocks has been shown to result in reduced DNA quality, which may cause increased sequencing artifacts.

This study assessed the effects of FFPE storage on next-generation sequencing, or NGS, and tested whether a DNA repair enzyme could improve interpretability of NGS data.

Panel-based NGS was performed on two hundred and ninety-one samples that were stored for up to seventeen years.

Length of storage affected data quality metrics, especially when the samples were stored for five years or more.