The purpose of the Tissue Core (TC) is to help the facilitate the scientific needs of peer-reviewed. Cancer Center investigators by providing a collection of centralized services and technologies focused around high quality, richly-annotated human biospecimens. The TC is organized in four distinct operational sections that provide end-to-end biorepository services required for the collection, processing, annotation, storage and ultimate release of biospecimens. The TC-lntake &Acquisition section is responsible for the collection and initial annotation and de-identification of biospecimens for investigator driven and general banking protocols. The TC-Sample Processing Lab provides a wide variety of biospecimen processing services ranging from processing of blood to extraction of nucleic acids. The TC-Research Histology Services section supports CCSG investigators by offering basic histology services, research focused immunohistochemistry and construction of Tissue Microarray. The TC-Lifetime Cancer Screening operates as a Tissue Core satellite facility at the Center's Lifetime Cancer Screening and Prevention Center. The technical staff is responsible for operating and maintaining core instrumentation and technology. Over the last grant period, the Core established sophisticated, state-of-the-science technologies to support Immunohistochemistry (Ventana Discovery Automated System), automated, high-throughput nucleic acid extraction systems, (Qiagen) and most recently a Shared Instrumentation Grant funded automated freezer system. A new biospecimen inventory management system (LabVantage Biobanking) was also launched. The new LabVantage Biobanking system provides centralized comprehensive sample management, consent verification and biospecimen de-identification allowing the core to effectively serve as an institutional Honest Broker. Access to biospecimens and Tissue Core services are governed by regularly updated biospecimen collection and utilization policies and well-defined chargeback mechanism. Collectively, all four TC sections are heavily utilized by all 5 research programs and provide support for over 90 investigator-initiated protocols. The Core requests CCSG Support of $400,966, which is 24% of its operational budget. Over 75% of total users are Moffitt members and peer-reviewed.
With highly trained staff, the Tissue Core provides Moffitt members with a state-of-the-art centralized biorepository, processing and histology services to conduct extensive cancer research. The significant investment in infrastructure as well as state of the art equipment and instrumentation provides a large and efficient biospecimen resource for Moffitt members.
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