The National Mesothelioma Virtual Bank (NMVB) consents patients to provide biospecimens (blood products and tissue) together with demographic data, occupational history and clinical data (stage, treatment and survival information) to the mesothelioma research community. The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is the coordinating site, and the NMVB protocol is in place at three partnering sites, New York University, Roswell Park Cancer Institute and University of Pennsylvania.
Our specific aims are to: 1) Continue to serve the mesothelioma cancer research community by collecting and distributing tissue, blood and the aforementioned data as well as increasing the NMVB cohort to 2400 patients. We will continue to document and continually evaluate the usefulness of the NMVB to the scientific community and measure its impact in collaboration with the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation; 2) Expand the NMVB to the University of Maryland as a site and add fresh frozen tissue and blood product collection at Roswell Park Cancer Institute. We will also add 350 cases donated by Merck Research Labs; and 3) Automate annotation of biospecimens through extraction of clinical, outcomes, and pathology data from electronic health records and cancer registry systems. We will deploy and implement a scalable informatics solution to maximize the effectiveness of the data extraction process across collaborating sites which will allow linkage to other national tissue and data sharing networks.
The National Mesothelioma Virtual Bank (NMVB) collects and distributes tumor tissue and blood samples to the research community from consented patients. The specimens are stored with de-identified clinical data and that is made available for research. Investigators can search the study database to identify and request these materials via the NMVB website. NMVB is the largest and most accessible resource for biospecimens donated by mesothelioma patients.
