Patent ID: 7728287

Claim:
A method of analyzing biological material for cancer prognosis or drug effectiveness determinations, wherein said biological material has at least one region of interest area, comprising the steps of: exposing the biological material to a recognition element, exposing the biological material to a mass tag element, exposing said recognition element, said mass tag element, and the biological material to a cleavable linker resulting in said recognition element and said mass tag element, being connected by said cleavable linker, cleaving said cleavable linker, using a time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometer and directing an ion beam of said time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometer to the biological material producing secondary ions, interrogating the at least one region of interest area from the biological material by accelerating said secondary ions into said time-of-flight mass spectrometer where they are analyzed for mass by measuring the time-of-flight of said secondary ions from the biological material to the detector, producing data, and analyzing said data for cancer prognosis or drug effectiveness determinations.