The National Mesothelioma Virtual Bank (NMVB) for Translational Research has created and maintains a national virtual patient registry and research resource bank. To date the NMVB has made available over 400 unique cases to share with the research community. NMVB now proposes to expand their innovative resources through a cooperative working group that broadly shares their mesothelioma research tools. The NMVB database is used for clinical and outcomes data collection related to each research resource (serum, plasma, tissue, pleural effusions, tissue microarrays, whole slide images, proteomic/genomic data and other resources - see specific aim 1). Each NMVB partner will be responsible for the data entry and updates into the registry for each of their research resources on a web based database developed in Pittsburgh which has its foundation in tools from the NCI Cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG) effort. The registry has been established and managed by the University of Pittsburgh team in collaboration with New York University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Meso Foundation via a CDC NIOSH cooperative agreement. We intend to significantly expand the network to include the National Functional Genomics Center and the Cooperative Human Tissue Network, as well as other organizations who are interested in sharing their research resources. In addition to actively publicizing the availability of this resource to prospective users in the research community, the Meso Foundation will collaborate with the NMVB to develop a virtual patient registry (see specific aim 2) that will allow researchers to access the patients affected by mesothelioma for clinical and translational research studies. Meso Foundation is well positioned to do this and can capitalize on its deep linkages to the patient advocacy community to create a dialogue with this deeply vested population. Marketing, outreach and evaluation of the NMVB's impact on translational research will be accomplished by partnering with the Meso Foundation (see specific aim 3). In summary, we intend to continue to expand our network to at least 1200 cases for translational research as well as develop a unique patient registry for recruiting those afflicted with mesothelioma. This expansion of the NMVB will provide unique and innovative tools to aid in the prevention, early detection and treatment of this uniformly fatal disease.
