Biospecimen procurement and tissue microarray manufacture for the CHTN

The University of Virginia (UVA) currently supports the “adult” Mid-Atlantic Division of the Cooperative Human Tissue Network (CHTN), offering high quality human tissue and biofluid specimens procured, stored and shipped under optimized standard operating procedures. A team of consent staff recruit subjects at UVA clinics, with the consent including provisions for genetic sequencing and data sharing as well as donating tissue, blood and bone marrow samples. Staffing, procedures & infrastructure are in place to minimize procurement times and tissue samples are quality controlled by histologic examination by Board-certified Pathologists. Procured tissue specimens are made available in fresh-frozen, chemically-fixed, paraffin- embedded and viable form. We propose to continue this activity, but to expand our current geographic area and to offer biospecimens from a more diverse population of donors. To do so, we have partnered with two other recruitment/procurement sites specifically to augment specimen procurement as well as provide geographic and racial/ethnic diversity. UVA will be joined in biospecimen procurement by the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), which has a significantly higher percentage of African-American patients than UVA, and by the University of New Mexico (UNM), which has a significantly higher percentage of Hispanic patients than UVA. As one of the few current CHTN divisions able to procure fresh and frozen samples of prostate cancer, we propose to continue to offer this precious resource to CHTN investigators. We also propose to continue our focus on constructing tissue microarrays (TMAs) for the CHTN, to help supplement the traditional strengths of the CHTN (prospective customizable procurement of tissue) with larger cohorts of specimens in TMA format, with more rich annotation of clinical data. Our ability to provide annotated data is enhanced by integration with a digital Clinical Data Repository at UVA and with an established tumor registry. With noted expertise in clinical informatics, we propose to enhance the current CHTN data structure with mapping to standard clinical diagnostic data models (LOINC, SNOMED) and to enhance biorepository-specific data capture with developing data models (BRISQ, SPREC, OBIB, etc.). To further augment biospecimens available to CHTN investigators, we have the opportunity to provide a large legacy collection of lung cancer biospecimens from the Lung Cancer Biospecimen Resource Network. We propose to expand histology guided- macrodissection services to create value-added target tissue enrichment and histologic quality control. We will also provide viable freezing of dissociated tissue and isolated white blood cells, as well as DNA/RNA isolation from tissue specimens.