Human Tissue Specimen Resources

Website: http://www-cdp.ims.nci.nih.gov/resources.html

The Resources Development Branch (RDB) of CDP stimulates, develops, and supports human tissue specimen resources to ensure availability of the tissue specimens needed to facilitate basic and translational cancer research. The branch provides information on legal and ethical issues and human subjects policy as they apply to human specimen resources.

Access to high-quality tissue specimens and clinical and outcome data is critical to continued scientific progress. RDB monitors changes in scientific needs for tissue specimen resources and acts to ensure that changing needs for specimens can be met in a timely manner.

RDB supports the collection and storage of high-quality, well-annotated human specimens collected from patients in NCI-funded, phase III clinical treatment trials. This support ensures that the tissue banks of NCI’s cooperative groups implement best practices, such as common data structures and standardized collection and storage practices. A common application process for using the specimens will improve access to specimens by the broader research community. Available information will include appropriate patient demographic, clinical, outcome, and treatment data. These activities are overseen by a Steering Committee formed from the cooperative groups.

The following tissue resources are available from CDP:

• Cooperative Breast Cancer Tissue Resource (CBCTR)
  http://cbctr.nci.nih.gov

  CBCTR supplies researchers with primary breast cancer tissues and associated clinical data. This valuable collection facilitates large studies that need archival tissue with clinical and outcome data. The CBCTR Website features an online database that investigators can search to identify the number of available breast cancer samples that meet their research requirements.

• Cooperative Prostate Cancer Tissue Resource (CPCTR)
  http://cpctr.cancer.gov/index.html

  CPCTR provides researchers with primary prostate cancer tissues and associated clinical data. This valuable collection facilitates large studies that need archival tissue with clinical and outcome data. The CPCTR Website features an online database that investigators can search to identify the number of available prostate cancer samples that meet their research requirements.

• Cooperative Human Tissue Network (CHTN)
  http://www-chtn.ims.nci.nih.gov

  CHTN provides biomedical researchers with access to human tissues. Six regional member institutions coordinate the collection and distribution of tissues across the United States and Canada. In addition to normal, benign, and malignant tissues, the resource offers tissues from patients with other diseases such as ulcerative colitis. Trained personnel coordinate the retrieval, preservation, and delivery of specimens obtained from surgical resections and autopsies. Since its establishment in 1987, CHTN has provided more than 500,000 high-quality specimens from a wide variety of organ sites to more than 1000 investigators.

• The NCI Clinical Trials Cooperative Groups have banked tumor specimens from large numbers of uniformly treated cancer patients with a variety of malignancies. Each group has a review process for research proposals. If proposals receive favorable reviews, specimens with clinical, treatment, and outcome data can be made available to researchers through collaborative arrangements. These banked specimens are most useful for clinical correlative studies on uniformly treated patient populations. Interested investigators may visit the NCI Specimen Resource Locator Website ( http://pluto3.nci.nih.gov/tissue/default.htm) or contact the Tissue Expediter at tissexp@mail.nih.gov.