The Nurses' Health Study (NHS) and two other large cohort studies (NHSII and Health Professionals Follow-up Study) included in this Core allow for the evaluation of biologic and lifestyle factors involved in cancer risk and survival. These studies have collected blood, urine, and tumor tissue specimens that will be used to assess circulating or urinary biomarkers, including metabolomics, and tumor tissue somatic mutation profiling, whole exome sequencing, protein expression, and mRNA gene expression for the Scientific Projects. Our biorepository houses blood samples from 80,590 cohort participants, including a second blood sample from 35,253 women collected 10-15 years after the initial collection, urine samples from 48,354 women, tumor tissue blocks from over 6,700 breast, colorectal, and ovarian cancer patients. These samples are a valuable but finite resource, thus we put substantial effort into ensuring high quality and efficient specimen handling and results data management in a cost-effective, ethical, state of the art manner.
The aims of the Biospecimen and High-Dimensional Data Management Core are: (1) to provide biologic specimens for biomarker studies of breast, colorectal, and ovarian cancers; (2) to institute comprehensive quality control procedures throughout project implementation; and (3) to apply data processing pipelines and use a database-driven data warehouse to manage high-dimensional and other assay results. The substantial -omics data (metabolomics, gene expression, whole exome sequencing) utilized within this program project require an integrated and standardized management approach to ensure high quality data for statistical analyses. The Core will provide critical support for appropriately implementing sample management, quality control, and data warehousing needed to conduct the scientific aims of this program project. Importantly, the collaborations between the core directors and project leaders will allow this core to successfully provide biological specimens and associated data for the assessment of hypotheses regarding breast, colorectal, and ovarian cancer risk and progression. This Core supports scientific aims in each project of the current application.
Program Narrative The Biospecimen and High-Dimensional Data Management Core will: (1) provide biologic specimens for biomarker studies of breast, colorectal, and ovarian cancers; (2) institute comprehensive quality control procedures throughout project implementation; and (3) apply data processing pipelines and use a database- driven data warehouse to manage high-dimensional and other assay results.
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