UAB has extensive experience in collecting, processing, storing, and supplying a wide range of human tissues to support research. Fresh, frozen, and paraffin preparations of tissues can be supplied as well as unstained tissue slides and other histology services. We will expand our current tissue resource services as part of the Pancreatic SPORE and join with our partners at the University of Minnesota (UMN) to establish a seamless tissue resource. We will 1) optimize pancreatic tissue collections so that specimens are snap frozen in liquid nitrogen in less than 15 minutes and the number of pancreatic tissues collected are greatly increased;2) expand our bank of well characterized pancreatic pre-invasive and invasive neoplastic specimens and matching uninvolved specimens from patients who have consented for their tissues to be used in genetic and other research along with clinical data/ outcome;3) provide microdissected specimens for sensitive technologies requiring pure samples of pancreatic neoplasia;4) establish uniform collection procedures with UMN and other SPORES 5) develop tissue matrix arrays of samples of pre-invasive and invasive pancreatic neoplasia to permit the concomitant study of many different specimens;and 5) to receive, store and distribute primary pancreatic xenograft cells from the collaboration with Johns Hopkins. This Core also will provide access to methods of morphological analysis that are difficult for individual projects to support efficiently, including quantitative light microscopic and immunocytochemical interpretation of tissues and cytologic materials and will offer methods to detect gene products within transfected cells and adjacent tissues. Investigators will have access to sophisticated techniques usually available only for human pathology, including multiplex immunoassays, tissue microdissection, special histology services, in situ hybridization, confocal laser microscopy, quantitative cytomorphometric analysis and flow cytometry. The core will enable unified purchase, characterization and utilization of shared sets of reagents;centrally and expertly performed procedures will free investigators from duplication of research methods, allowing more productive work with the available resources and acceleration of experimental timetables.
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