Contact:

Roger L. Aamodt, Ph.D.
Resources Development Branch,
Cancer Diagnosis Program
National Cancer Institute
Telephone: (301) 496-7147
FAX: (301) 402-7819
E-mail: ra32u@.nih.gov

Objective of Project:

The goal of this initiative is to expand the quantity, quality, representativeness, and accessibility of specimen collections developed from NCI-funded, phase III treatment trials in order to better support cancer research needs. Specimen collections from phase III trials provide important support for research studies while allowing a level of quality control and an economy of scale not available from collections of specimens that are assembled outside the context of clinical trials. These specimen collections are unique because they have detailed treatment histories, recurrence data, and careful follow-ups for patients over long periods of time. Improving the quality and accessibility of specimens from NCI-supported clinical trials will facilitate the development of prognostic and predictive markers, molecular signatures, target identification and other important translational research studies.

Description of Project:

This initiative is to support the infrastructure needed to ensure the collection of, storage of, and access to high-quality, well-annotated human specimens collected from and representative of the patient populations entered into NCI-funded phase III clinical treatment trials. High-quality banks of uniformly collected specimens with validated clinical and outcome data will be essential for development and delivery of the new diagnostic and predictive tools that are critical to eliminating the suffering and death due to cancer by 2015. Groups organizing and carrying out phase III trials are uniquely positioned to provide the high quality specimens and have the informative clinical data and resources needed to meet this challenging goal. Groups with existing banks in the United States will be eligible. A steering committee composed of members from each participating group and an NCI scientist will coordinate the activities of the groups, develop best practices for operation of clinical trials specimen repositories, develop a uniform approach to evaluating requests for use of specimens and data from the banks, and focus on any other issues that will improve the usefulness of the NCI supported banks.