De klinisch-moleculair patholoog: voorbij het beeld

Conflict of interest: none declared. Financial support: none declared.

• Pathology has always held a key position in medical science by providing an anatomical description of diseases on which the therapeutic regimens could be based. The role of pathology in medical diagnosis is changing considerably.

• Three elements are being discussed: (a) to date microscopic anatomy has been important in the classification of diseases; (b) immunohistochemical colouring agents enable pathologists to visualize proteins in tissues and thus to define normal and deviant cells with great accuracy with respect to lineage derivation and differentiation stage; (c) current developments in molecular biology will have a decisive influence on the classification, diagnosis and treatment of tumours as they allow the evaluation of the function and genetic characteristics of tumour tissue.

• Although molecular pathology now also covers purely genetic diagnostics of isolated DNA or RNA it is expected that imaging DNA diagnostics within the tissue itself will become increasingly important.