caBIG^® and the NCI Office of Biorepositories and Biospecimen Research (OBBR)

The National Cancer Institute (NCI), in recognition of the key role of biospecimens in cancer research, has led a pioneering effort over the past five years to standardize and enhance biorepositories. The NCI sought input from leaders across the cancer research community, including basic scientists, clinical oncologists, private industry, patient advocacy groups, and the bioethics and patient protection community. Building on that collective knowledge, the NCI has led a coordinated effort to develop a common biorepository infrastructure that promotes resource sharing. The NCI’s Office of Biorepositories and Biospecimen Research (OBBR) (http://biospecimens.cancer.gov) was established in 2005 as part of this effort.

The goals of the OBBR are to:

• Serve as the coordination and management center for overarching biospecimen-related policies, practices, and other related issues across the NCI’s biorepositories
• Provide leadership for biobanking activities that support all types of cancer research funded by the NCI, through a comprehensive approach to standard-setting, biobanking science, and education with the aim of improving the quality of human biospecimens and biobanking operations nationally and internationally

Human biospecimens can provide a bridge between emerging molecular information and clinical information by enabling researchers to study the molecular characteristics of actual human disease, and then correlate those patterns with what is known about the clinical progression of the disease. Specifically, human biospecimens can be used to:

• Identify and validate drug targets (such as specific genes or gene products)
• Identify disease mechanisms
• Develop screening tests for biomarkers associated with certain sub-types of a disease
• Group patients based on their genetic characteristics and the likelihood of positive response to new drugs
• Group patients based on the biomarkers of their disease to determine which treatment is appropriate

One of the most challenging areas in the field of biorepositories has been the absence of information technology tools and infrastructure to facilitate the appropriate collection, processing, archiving, and dissemination of biospecimens to the research community, not only within an individual medical institution but also in a network across multiple institutions.

As part of its caBIG^® initiative, through the Tissue Banks and Pathology Tools Workspace (http://caBIG.nci.nih.gov/workspaces/TBPT), the NCI has developed such informatics tools, including the caTissue suite of applications:

• caTissue core addresses all aspects of donor enrollment and informed consent, collection and tracking of samples.
• caTissue CAE addresses annotation of biospecimens with molecular and clinical data.
• caTIES allows extraction of structured data from free text pathology reports.

caBIG^® tools are designed with security considerations to support patient privacy and data access restrictions, including those aspects covered by the Common Rule and HIPAA. (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) Visit http://www.hipaa.org to learn more.

caBIG^® enables researchers to identify, query, and gain access to hundreds of thousands of high quality, clinically annotated biospecimens from a geographically dispersed network of biorepositories.

Back to Top