The Tissue Procurement Core Facility is designed as a central tissue acquisition and distribution facility. The Core enables the efficient collection and use of patient tissues and their subsequent distribution to Project Investigators. Services provided by the Core Facility include making initial patient contact and gaining informed consent, acquisition of pertinent patient information from chart and patient interviews, clinical/pathologic evaluation of collected tissues, and the initial processing and distribution of tissues. Tissues for the Program Project are obtained from reproductive tracts of patients undergoing hysterectomy or endometrial biopsy. The Core Facility identifies and enrolls patients and evaluates the appropriateness of clinical cases. In addition, the facility oversees the collection of information on endocrine condition, clinical diagnoses, and gross pathology. The second major function of the Core Facility is to coordinate tissue distribution to investigators. The third function of this Core is the collation of patient data on selected clinical parameters including the maintenance of a Project database to enable rapid correlation of clinical, endocrinologic an immunologic parameters of different tissue samples. This database will enable investigators to easily evaluate hypotheses that arise in the course of the research. The Core combines the expertise of its members, which include a Core Director, a Medical Coordinator, and Pathologist who provide consultation and support for all of the Core services. In addition, the Core has the services of a Clinical Coordinator who contacts the patients to obtain clinical histories and oversees the caseload. The biostatistical shared service and the Norris Cotton Cancer Center at DHMC will provide consultation for the statistical evaluations and maintenance of the database. A microbiologist, in conjunction with the Clinic Microbiological laboratories, will provide consultation on the diagnosis and identification of STDs.
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