The tissue procurement and analysis core facility serves an integral function of not only providing tissue procurement, processing and disbursement of tissue to SPORE investigators but also provides an important analysis component. The core is expanding this analysis component to the population based studies of the SPORE to allow for cost effective centralization of resources coupled with expert maintenance of quality control and quality assurance practices. The procurement section efficiently accesses all breast surgical procedures and obtains blood samples and when available fresh tissue on all patients giving informed consent. The tissues are entered in a database and distributed to the SPORE investigators as processed DNA, RNA or tissue sections as requested. A bark of peripheral blood lymphocytes is also maintained on all breast patients. The tissue analysis section provides immunohistochemical and other protein analysis for the SPORE. A major focus of this section provides analyses for the novel genes which have been discovered via the basic science projects, assessing the levels of expression of these genes in normal and malignant breast tissues. This section is being expanded to also include the population based studies of the SPORE (Project#2: Carolina Breast Cancer Study, Project#3: DCIS Study, Project#5: Mayo Benign Breast Disease Study) for the expression of tumor suppressor genes, oncogenes and proliferation markers. Expression of the protein products of these genes will be related to the molecular analyses as well as to exposure information obtained.
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