) The exceptionally high benefit to cost ratio of a centrally operated tissue procurement core facility is well recognized and the need for a core facility at Henry Ford Health System (HFHS) has been acknowledged for some time. On January 15/1999, the Core Facility, a service of the Josephine Ford Cancer Center (JFCC) and housed within the Department of Pathology, became operational. A governing board of 5 members oversees activities of the Facility. We have focused initially on procuring tissue from surgeries performed only at the main hospital to assure the high quality of tissue management. A l2cc blood sample is collected at the time of pre-operative diagnostic blood work. On the day of surgery, an on-call pathologist's assistant collects tissue from operating rooms immediately after completion of the surgery. Each specimen is dissected according to surgical pathology protocol under direct supervision of a pathologist. Normal and malignant sections are separated; tumor samples are further evaluated for necrosis and/or hemorrhage. A separate paraffin block cassette/sample is prepared; blood and tissue specimens are aliquoted into multiple vials and snap frozen at - 80 C. Clinical and demographic data, number of vials/case, reason(s) for not allocating tissue for banking, procurement time, and the availability of matched blood samples are entered into appropriate databases. In the first 6 months, we collected a total of 347 specimens, 39% from African-American and 55% from Caucasian patients. The distribution of tissue by sites includes 17% prostate, 14% colon, 11% breast, 14% lung, and 38% from other organs. Tumor tissue viability ranged between 90- 100% with diagnostic needs as the main reason for not banking. The mean procurement time was 21.5 minutes (+ 3.19). In this application, we propose to continue and expand the operation the Core Facility with 3 foci. First, to strengthen the existing support system for researchers at JFCC. Second, to bank frozen tumor tissues with matched blood and paraffin embedded samples on a routine basis; and third, to accurately interface pathology, treatment outcome and epidemiologic data while maintaining patients' confidentiality.
