The National Cancer Institute Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) Program is interested in developing a SEER-linked Virtual Tissue Repository (VTR). A SEER VTR, with its population representativeness and large sampling frame would be a unique resource for assembling robust collections of biospecimens even for rare tumors and outcomes. SEER demographic and clinical data can be augmented with custom annotation of data including detailed chemotherapy, time to recurrence, and body mass index. The objectives of the VTR Pilot Study are to assess the ability of SEER Registries To serve as a resource for biospecimen research To locate cases with biospecimens in pathology laboratories and determine the requirements to retrieve those biospecimens To provide custom annotation of specified data items The VTR Pilot will also capture costs to identify and annotate these biospecimens.
