Biological specimens are the centerpiece ot research efforts geared to translate laboratory discoveries intopatients. High quality procurement, processing, diagnosis, annotation, storage, and distribution of pathologytissue specimens are vital to translational research. Approximately 1000 radical prostatectomies areperformed per year at our institution and we currently have over 14,000 such patients in our database, 6.5%of which are from African Americans. We have collected fresh frozen prostate tumor tissues from more than1900 patients, represented by more than 7000 frozen tissue blocks. We have created tissue microarrayscontaining prostate cancer from 926 patients, most with long term follow-up. Core B has the followingSpecific Aims: 1)To maintain and enhance a repository of prostate tissues containing a wide range ofneoplastic and non-neoplastic samples from both fresh frozen and paraffin blocks, prostatic fluids, DMA,RNA, and protein, and, to distribute these samples to SPORE and other investigators; 2) to provide highquality histopathologic diagnoses of tissue specimens and tissue microarrays; 3) To perform well-controlledimmunohistochemistry (IHC) assays, interpretation and quantitative analyses of IHC slides to facilitateindividual research projects; 4) To continue to design, produce and distribute tissue microarrays usinghuman prostate tissues, cell lines, and xenografts; 5) To continue to improve and add tools to our opensource tissue microarray database and software (TMAJ) (http://tmaj.pathology.jhmi.edu) including thedevelopment of new open source image analysis tools 'FRIDA' (FRamework for Image Dataset Analysis)while ensuring compatibility with the CaBIG grid system. 6) To test emerging software tools, such asCaTissue, from the CaBIG program for specimen banking efforts, serving as a model for other SPOREs andother research programs throughout our University. 7) To provide a facility and pathology expertise for lasercapture microdissection; 8) To continue to function as the Central Pathology Core for the Inter-ProstateSPORE Biomarker Study (IPBS). The continued enhancement of these resources will facilitate developmentof biological markers geared to disease prevention, diagnosis, assessment of prognosis, prediction for drugtreatment response, and monitoring response to therapy developments needed to achieve the ultimategoal of eliminating suffering and death from prostate cancer.
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