The goal of UM Prostate SPORE Tissue/Informatics Core is to collect biological material with associated clinical information to facilitate translational prostate cancer research. The Core places patient confidentiality and clinical care as a top priority. As a coordinated effort between pathology, urology, medical oncology, and UM Prostate SPORE researchers, the Core has a developed a unified bioinformatics infrastructure that provides researchers a wide range of annotated samples. To date, detailed information exists on over 4200 radical prostatectomy patients operated on at the Univ. of Michigan between 1994-present. The specific goals of the Tissue Core include: (1) Protection of patient welfare. The highest priority is given to assure that no research protocol compromises pathology diagnosis or tumor staging. (2) Acquisition and pnocessing of prostate tissues for research. The Core assures that the widest range of prostate tissues and derived biomolecules (i.e., protein, DNA and RNA) are available from several established and new sources. These include benign prostate tissue from patients without any known prostatic disease (cystoprostatectomy specimens and transplant donor prostates), clinically localized prostate cancer, and metastatic hormone refractory prostate cancer (Rapid Autopsy Program). (3) Maintenance of clinical and pathology data with links to molecular studies. The Tissue (Dore will continue to expand the detailed clinical and pathology database conforming to the NCI's Common Data Elements (CDE) guidelines, permitting queries between molecular findings and clinically relevant outcomes. (4) High quality pathologic review of prostate tissues. Expert GU pathologists assure uniform review of prostate tissue samples. (5) Pathology consultation for the purpose of designing translational research projects. This service focuses on determining the types of tissues and amount required for the successful completion of the research projects. (6) Quality assessment of prostate tissues and clinical data. The Tissue Core staff regularly evaluates frozen and formalin fixed tissues for adequacy. (7) Development of technology appropriate for pathology-based translational research. New technologies such as integrative high-throughput sequencing to identify causative, driving mutations in patient tumors have been introduced. The Core will continue to be integral to the sample preparation, analysis of biopsy tissue tumor content and long-term storage of all these patient samples. In summary, the Core will provide SPORE investigators with a wealth of carefully annotated samples for translational research, while maintaining the highest level of clinical care and patient confidentiality.
The Prostate SPORE Tissue/Informatics Core collects, annotates, and stores critical prostate cancer related biospecimens required for patient-oriented research. It also has the capabilities for the morphological analysis of tissues and molecular analysis of tissues and biofluids. Our continued goal is to decrease the morbidity and mortality of prostate cancer through innovative research that is supported by biospecimen resources, database and informatics support.
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