BIOSPECIMEN REPOSITORY

The COP Biospecimen Repository will serve as a joint repository for two of the Comparative Oncology Program’s initiatives, the Comparative Oncology Trial Consortium (COTC) and the Canine Comparative Oncology Genomics Consortium (CCOGC). All samples collected from the consortiums and other initiatives will be inventoried and linked to a central database so that patient characteristics, intervention, and follow-up data will be available to collaborators.

Contributing centers will have access to the Biospecimen Repository Database. The tissue bank will adhere to rigorous standards of practice for the procurement and transportation of paraffin-embedded and frozen tissues.

Tissue samples will include:

• tumor
• relevant and surrounding normal tissues
• serum
• plasma
• buffy coats

Clinical and biological information will be integrated into the Repository’s database.

Advantages

• The rapid progression of most naturally occurring cancers will allow outcome data to be associated with all submitted tissues in a relatively short period of time.
• This outcome data and the relative ease of collection of tissues from animal patients is a significant advantage over similar human cancer tissue banks.
• A close collaboration between the COP tissue bank and the NCI-CCR Tissue Array Research Program (TARP) will allow the continued generation of valuable tissue arrays, using these naturally occurring cancers.
• Our experience with canine osteosarcoma and lymphoma tissue arrays suggests that high quality, biologically informative arrays can be developed using prospectively collected canine tumor samples in short periods of time.

For more information regarding the COP’s Biospecimen Repository, please contact Christina Maczko at mazckoc@mail.nih.gov