In Z04 R. Büttner, A. Quaas and A. Schultheis will provide high-level core support for all subprojects that require analyses of tissue specimens. Their support includes tissue procurement, storage of fresh frozen, as well as formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded samples, and tissue processing, as well as a large number of sophisticated analyses. These include basic morphological assessment of a given human or murine tumor specimen, immunohistochemical analyses of key marker expression, as well as advanced technologies for digital processing and storage of immunohistochemical images and molecular analytes. Furthermore, the institute will provide tissue microarrays for parallel analyses of select molecular features from the various projects. Finally, Z04 will provide tumor specimens that are annotated not only for the various immunohistochemical markers, but also for basic, SCLC-specific mutations (e.g., TP53 and RB1).