The role of the TECHNICAL CORE (TC) is to provide the services and resources required by the individual projects to accomplish their research objectives in a timely and cost efficient manner. There are six specific aims: 1. Maintain the Serum, Tissue and cDNA Bank: Each of the four Projects generates and/or utilizes specimens which need storage. Accordingly, one of the key responsibilities of this TC is to acquire, store and make available to the investigators the resources necessary for various studies. For example, the TC supports a team of phlebotomists and technicians who acquire and process specimens on a daily basis, review the clinical charts, abstract the pertinent information. 2. Supply Investigators with Cell Lines and Athymic/SCID Mice Bearing Human Tumor Xenografts: To make readily available well-characterized cell lines and xenografts for studies is one of the most demands and costly aspects of this TC. The TC is also responsible for providing xenograft tissue to investigators worldwide who request these resources. 3. Develop New CaP Xenografts from Fresh Tissue Harvests and Fully Characterize Established Xenografts: An important component of this TC is to continue development of new CaP xenografts. 4. Develop New Models for Study of Soft Tissue and Bone Metastasis: For the study of bone metastasis, a clinically important aspect of Cap, novel approaches must be taken. It is the responsibility of this TC to develop such models in collaboration with the respective project leaders. TC will help develop bone metastatic models using a SCID-hu reconstitution approach, i.e. grafted human bone. 5. Provide Research PSA Results on Clinical and Murine Specimens: The TC performs research total PSA, free PSA, and ultra-sensitive chemiluminescent PSA assays on a weekly basis on clinical specimens, tissue culture supernatants and murine sera. 6. Provide Molecular and Immunohistological Analysis on Clinical Specimens, Cell Lines and Xenografts: In addition to providing PSA assays for the O'Brien investigators, this TC also makes available to the various investigators molecular analysis of tissue specimens, including RT-PCR and in situ hybridization.
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