The primary goal of the WC-ACSR is to acquire, store, and equitably distribute tumor and biological fluids from patients with HIV-associated malignancies and to actively participate within the structure of the national ACSR program.
Specific Aims : 1) Establish an organizational and structural model that will support the primary purpose of the National ACSR through contributions in leadership and active participation in all of the ACSR activities and developmental programs The WC-ACSR is centered at San Francisco General Hospital and has major specimen referral sites at UCSF, DSC, UCLA, University of Hawaii and San Diego. The WC-ACSR PI, Dr McGrath, has been the chairman of the ACSR steering committee for all 14 years of its existence and is committed to the advancement of the overall goals of the ACSR going forward. The WC-ACSR will participate in all of the CODCC defined governance and outreach committees, work to advance the ACSR database to comply with caBIG regulatory requirements for the future and comply with all criteria for success as defined in the ACSR MOO and by the NCI best practices program for biorepositories. The WC-ACSR has been successful in adding value to the ACSR national program by providing specimens to successful applicants to the ACSR. Unique aspects of the WC-ACSR collection program: 1) Source of the largest multi-site autopsy specimen collections, with >12,000 specimens in the frozen tissue bank (70 cases of AIDS lymphoma, 44 of KS with many sets of other controls and non-AIDS defining cancers) and >8000 specimens in the fixed tissue bank;2) Real time sources of fresh blood and tissues from patients with AIDS and AIDS related cancers;3) Access to specimen collections including an 80,000 specimen collection from the SF gay men's health study on KS and HHV8 and multisite autopsies of non-AIDS defining cancers in HIV patients;4) Provision to investigators of the most widely used HHV8 positive cell line (BCBL1) in the world;and 5) Leading the development program for creation of valuable ACSR derived research products such as TMA generation with associated tissue DNA available for novel molecular studies of AIDS related cancers. 2) To innovatively support AIDS-malignancy translational research through acquisition and distribution of relevant biospecimens The WC-ACSR has added novel programs to obtain specimens from HIV infected patients who are experiencing the """"""""next wave"""""""" of cancers, those non-AIDS defining. Several blood and tissue acquisition programs have been initiated to achieve these goals. Overall, the WC-ACSR will work within the overall ACSR to ensure that investigators receive the best materials for their research goals, and to evolve the collection and specimens characterization processes to allow the ACSR applicants to have access to specimens from the entire AIDS epidemic time frame preserved in a manner appropriate for evaluation by state of the art technologies.
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