Over the past decade, knowledge about the pathogenesis of human tumors has been attributed to and limited by the availability of well-characterized human tissues and fluids. With this in mind, tissue/biologic fluid facilities have emerged as a means of overseeing specimen collection, storage, processing and distribution for investigative studies. The purpose of the Specimen Resource is to provide human tissues, biologic fluids and expert pathologic interpretation to SPORE investigators;and to maintain a large and diverse specimen bank for future studies. The Specimen Resource will collect tissues/biologic fluids in a manner that meets the needs of the individual investigators without compromising clinical patient care;store these samples in such a way as to ensure long-term security and easy accessibility;process samples so that they are suitable for further analysis;and distribute samples to investigators in a timely fashion. To maximize translational impact of the projects, specimens are collected and processed under the supervision of pathologists in close collaboration with a multidisciplinary team of clinical specialists and basic research investigators with a common expertise in neoplasia of the upper respiratory tract. A concerted effort to collect and bank tissue specimens and biologic fluids from the upper respiratory tract has been an ongoing effort since 1990. These materials have been collected with appropriate IRB approval and patient consent. The specimens are primarily obtained from patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma or from patients at risk of developing this tumor. The fresh frozen specimen bank currently houses 26,092 specimens from 5,147 patients including 3,381 carcinomas,4,838 phenotypically normal tissues including mucosa taken from the surgical margins of cancer resections,4,691 oral rinses/swabs, 3,831 plasma samples, 5,352 serum samples, and 166fine needle aspirates. These samples are cataloged in a state of the art database (i.e. HAND database) and efficiently stored for efficient retrieval. In many cases, the samples have already been processed (e.g.microdissected for enrichment of tumor DMA) and are available in the form of extracted DMA, RNA and/or protein. The Specimen Resource is staffed by pathologists with expertise in neoplasia of the upper respiratory tract, and has ready access to a laser capture microdissection facility, a tissue array facility, an immunohistochemistry facility, and an in-situ hybridization facility.
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