Patent ID: 7998707

Claim:
A method for quantitative measurement of gene expression of a target gene in a fixed paraffin embedded tissue sample, comprising: (a) deparaffinizing the sample to obtain a deparaffinized sample; (b) isolating RNA from the deparaffinized sample by heating the deparaffinized sample in a chaotropic solution comprising an effective concentration of a chaotropic agent to a temperature in the range of about 75 to about 100° C. for a time period of about 5 to about 120 minutes and then recovering said RNA from said chaotropic solution to yield isolated RNA; (c) subjecting the isolated RNA to RT-PCR amplification using a pair of oligonucleotide primers capable of amplifying a region of the target gene mRNA, to obtain an amplified sample; and (d) determining the quantity of target gene mRNA relative to the quantity of an internal control gene's mRNA from the isolated mRNA, wherein the heating step increases the amount of cDNA that is amplified in the RT-PCR amplification step from 3 to 1000 fold in comparison to a deparaffinized tissue sample that is subject to similar RNA isolation conditions as in step (b) but not heated.