Frequently Asked Questions

Tumor biobanking is the long-term storage of your tumor tissue or blood so it can be used later for diagnostics, research, or personalized treatment. Your hospital will keep a portion of your tumor tissue in pathology, preserved in a way that limits the tests it can support, and under their custody (strictly at their discretion). Kernis changes the tumor tissue ownership model by helping you keep a portion of your tumor tissue and preserve it alive and in every other format, so you keep every testing option on the table well beyond what the standard of care enables.

If you don't intervene, your hospital will (1) claim all the tissue outright, leaving you unable to claim it back, and (2) preserve it in only one format (FFPE). Exercising control over your live tumor tissue lets you increase your testing options, including high-resolution genomic profiling, drug sensitivity testing on live tumor tissue, organoid creation, and access to the latest bio-analytics for an advanced personalized tumor profile. None of this is possible if you don't intervene and don't own your tissue, and you only get one shot: pre-procedure.

Hospitals typically preserve your tumor samples in FFPE (formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded). FFPE is useful for pathology, common diagnostic stains, and low-resolution genomic sequencing. Fixing the tissue in formalin kills the cells, so the tests possible on FFPE are limited. Kernis helps you keep a live portion of your tumor tissue so it can be leveraged across five formats: live whole tissue, cryopreserved live cells, flash-frozen, OCT-embedded, and FFPE. Each preservation type supports different tests (there is no one-size-fits-all). If you aren't proactive, key downstream testing options are no longer possible once tissue is preserved in the default format.

Cryopreserved tissue keeps cells alive, which is what is needed for organoids and live-cell drug testing. Flash-frozen tissue locks in the molecular state of the tumor for high-resolution genomic, proteomic, and metabolomic work. FFPE is the stable, shelf-friendly format suited to archival, pathology review, and spatial biology. A deeply personalized approach leverages all three main preservation modes, and we help orchestrate the collection and preservation workflow so you can preserve your tissue for maximal optionality.

Decades, when preserved and stored properly.

No. There is one shot at live tumor tissue preservation: pre-procedure.

Yes. If your hospital still has FFPE blocks or slides on file from your procedure, we can help you request them and bring them into your personal biobank. FFPE tissue can be used for deep spatial omics, re-pathology, and high-throughput immunofluorescence. These are highly valuable molecular techniques, but only if you make your tissue your own. We are here to help you do that and to set up coordinated next-generation testing specific to the preserved tissue formats.

We start with a consultation to understand your situation and review your medical records. From there, we obtain your permission to coordinate with your surgical team, help with the consent paperwork, arrange collection kit shipment to the hospital, perform high-touch on-site support to ensure proper tissue collection, organize transport of your tissue after surgery, route it to processing and storage across the appropriate modalities, and give you portal access so you can see exactly where your samples are at any time. If you've already had surgery, we shift the focus to retrieving the FFPE samples your hospital is holding.

Before, ideally as soon as your surgery date is on the calendar. Live-tissue collection and preservation only works if we've coordinated with your surgical team ahead of time and the right logistics are in place on the day of. That said, if surgery has already happened, reach out anyway. We can still help you retrieve and consolidate the FFPE samples the hospital has stored, as described above.

Your surgery happens exactly as planned. We coordinate with your surgical and pathology teams in advance to ensure pathology gets what is medically necessary and preserved in formalin, while you keep a portion of high-purity, viable tumor tissue stored in a custom live-preservation media collection kit.

We arrange validated cold-chain logistics with continuous temperature monitoring. Every handoff from the OR to the lab to long-term storage gets logged in your chain of custody. We also coordinate on-site preservation when appropriate for maximal quality.

Chain of custody is the paper trail: who touched your tissue, when, and where it went. You can pull it up anytime in the Kernis Portal, along with quality metrics and current storage status.

Our lab partners split your tissue across the appropriate preservation types, run initial accession testing, and document the quality of each sample. You get a QC report that tells you what's viable and what kinds of testing your samples can support later.

You do. Our model is custodial, meaning we coordinate the transport, storage, and testing destinations of your tissue on your behalf, but you keep ownership and decision-making authority. That's what we mean by 'Own Your Biology.'

Yes. Through the portal, you can authorize testing, request a transfer to a lab or trial site, or pull samples back. It's your call.

It means you decide what gets tested, where your tissue goes, and what research (if any) it supports.

Yes. You can authorize a transfer to any qualified lab, trial site, or research partner, and we handle the logistics and compliance side.

That's up to you. You can keep it in storage, transfer it elsewhere, donate it to research, or have it disposed of. All of those options are spelled out in your service agreement.

It depends on which type of preservation, but the menu includes genomic profiling, RNA and proteomic analysis, immunohistochemistry, organoid-based drug testing, functional drug sensitivity assays, and newer tests that need live cells to work.

Often, yes. A lot of trials require fresh or frozen tissue, the gold standard for high-resolution genomic analysis. Having live tissue banked through Kernis can keep doors open that would otherwise close. With live tissue, every preservation modality remains possible.

Organoids are tiny 3D cultures grown from your live tumor cells, usually originating from cancer stem cells in the sample, and they closely recapitulate the actual tumor biology. They behave much like the original tumor, which makes them useful for testing and modeling how a specific drug might work on your cancer before it's tested on you.

That's the key reason for preserving across multiple formats. Live, frozen, and fixed tissue cover the testing methods that exist now and give you the best shot at being compatible with whatever novel approaches come next.

Our lab partners expose your live tumor cells to candidate drugs and watch how they respond. The results give your care team real data on what's likely to work for your tumor specifically, and what probably won't. It goes beyond inferring what will happen from tumor genetics alone: it puts the actual cells to the test.

Book a free consultation through the Get Started page. We'll walk you through your options, the timeline, and how we'd coordinate with your care team. If surgery has already happened, we'll talk through what's still possible with FFPE retrieval.

Yes. We can work with a designated representative, but the patient must give consent.

Yes, nationwide. Our logistics team coordinates with your hospital wherever you are.

Your diagnosis information, your surgery date if you have one (or the date of a past surgery if it's already happened), the name and contact for your surgical team, ideally your pathology report, and any questions on your mind.