Fig. 4: Transcriptomic and protein expression profiles in function of post-mortem interval in non-tumor and tumor tissues.

a Design of the experiment. Fresh frozen samples (illustrated as tubes) and/or Formalin-Fixed Paraffin-Embedded (FFPE) samples (illustrated as blocks) from non-tumor or tumor tissues were taken repeatedly from the same tissue area (at 1.5 h time intervals) during the autopsy. Sample specific post-mortem interval (ssPMI) was defined as the time between death of the patient and fixation of the sample. Created with BioRender.com. b Results of the testing strategy evaluating the association between quality metrics and ssPMI at the RNA level regarding the non-tumor (left) and the tumor tissues (right) for samples kept at room temperature (RT, in red) and cooled between 4 °C and 10 °C (in blue). Linear coefficient (coef), 95% confidence interval (95% CI) and p-values are reported in the forest plots. Potential non-linear associations are reported in supplementary appendix. For the assigned reads, numbers are reported in kilo (1k = 1000 reads). c IHC slides of a liver metastasis of Pt2023 stained for ER, at time point 1 (top) and after cooling at time point 3 (below). Scale bar = 100 μm. d Results of the testing strategy evaluating the association between ER, PR and KI67 markers and ssPMI at the protein level for samples kept at room temperature (in red) and cooled between 4 °C and 10 °C (in blue). Linear coefficient (coef), 95% confidence interval (95% CI) and p-values are reported in the forest plots. No indication for non-linearity was found.