Collaborative ECHO research led by Jennifer Straughen, PhD, of Henry Ford Health System compared two different methods of placental sample preservation for metabolite analysis: flash freezing versus room-temperature fixation in methanol. The results of this study demonstrated that the room-temperature collection method can produce similar metabolism data to the flash-freezing, the standard method. This research, titled “Comparison of methanol fixation versus cryopreservation of the placenta for metablomics analysis,” is published in Scientific Reports.
For this study, researchers collected placental samples from mothers following delivery at Henry Ford Health. The researchers then removed pea-sized pieces of placental tissue and preserved them using either flash-freezing or methanol fixation. Metabolite analysis of these samples revealed similar quality results for both methods—although a greater number of metabolites were typically detected in the methanol-fixed samples and methanol extract.
“The results presented in this paper allow for the collection of placental tissue samples for metabolite analysis at room temperature instead of by flash freezing,” said Dr. Straughen. “Room-temperature fixation in methanol requires less equipment than flash freezing and may be more feasible to perform in community-based hospitals.”
More work is needed in the future to describe the metabolic data collected during this study and compare it to data from previous studies. Researchers will also need to repeat this study with a larger sample size to confirm these findings.