This cost center maintains a biorepository of multiple, longitudinal cervical swabs and blood specimens from 5,000 women who participated in the ASCUS/LSIL Triage Study for Cervical Cancer (ALTS) trial. These well characterized specimens have been utilized in studies resulting in over 60 publications. They continue to be an invaluable resource to evaluate new molecular markers as potential assays for clinical utility. This will be an ongoing project as long as samples remain in the freezers. Storage and retrieval as needed of blood and cervical cell samples that were collected during clinical trial ? ALTS. Cervical vials are stored in a cold room. Other blood and cervical samples are stored in liquid nitrogen freezers. Blood and tissue samples will be made available to those conducting the analysis. In the future, the ALTS storage (and retrieval/processing) funding needs should decrease by about 10 - 20 % a year. We will be culling old liquid cytology samples (in cold storage but not frozen) that are mostly used up, but also deteriorate over time and are therefore of little value at the point. The remaining frozen serum and cervical samples are fine and are still being utilized.
