The Human Tissue and Organ Research Resource (HTORR) is a division of the National Disease Research Interchange (NDRI), the only not-for-profit NIH-funded organization whose mission is to provide the biomedical research community with human tissues for research. NDRI has a unique 24/7 nationwide human tissue acquisition network of over 130 tissue source sites, including organ procurement organizations, tissue banks, eye banks, hospitals and individual donors registered with the NDRI private donor program. HTORR is an essential research resource that uses systems customized to meet individual researcher requests to recover and distribute a broad range of high quality normal and diseased human tissues recovered from a diverse donor pool. HTORR, will continue to enhance researcher service and meet the evolving and expanding needs of the research community through 1) Supporting HTORR?s service to the biomedical research community by providing customized customer service, improving the quality of human tissue collection, and enhancing communication to the biomedical research community 2) Providing HTORR with a Tissue Source Site (TSS) network to meet the changing needs of the scientific community by monitoring TSS performance against demand, providing TSS with the tools necessary for donor screening and tissue recovery, and collaborating with additional partners to access tissue from donors with specific diseases, and 3) Continuing to monitor and maintain adherence to laws, regulations, industry best practices, and standards regarding the donation of human tissue for research. In addition to the serving researchers studying a wide range of common diseases, HTORR will continue to provide human tissues to investigators studying rare diseases, including LAM, and HIV. Implementation of this plan will ensure uninterrupted service of high quality, well annotated normal and diseased human biospecimens to investigators from an established network of tissue source sites, in concert with the development and implementation of innovative project-focused initiatives designed to meet the evolving needs of the biomedical research community.
The research demand for human tissues continues to grow and the HTORR program provides a unique service to biomedical investigators nationwide whose research requires human tissues, organs and well annotated data. Over the past 4 years nearly 500 scientific papers were published by scientists who used HTORR-provided tissues, confirming HTORR's indispensable contribution to the biomedical research community and the impact of these services on the search for new treatments and cures for common and rare diseases, including HIV/AIDS.
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