A major obstacle to research in pancreatic cancer has been lack of access to high-quality annotated specimens of human tissues from all stages of PDAC. This difficulty is due to the relative inaccessibility of the pancreas and its prominent fibrous component, which make it technically difficult to obtain samples of sufficient heoplastic cellularity for many analytic approaches. The overall goal of the BioBank Core will be established to assist PPG member laboratories in the accrual and centralization of biologic resources that are critically required for pancreatic cancer research.
Specific aims are directed at: 1) maintaining a centralized, molecularly annotated human-derived murine xenograft core which'can enrich and amplify the neoplastic cell population while maintaining the genotypic and histologic character closest to that of the parent human cancer;2) providing a molecularly annotated cell-line repository. To accomplish these aims we will take advantage of our immediate access to human surgical specimens and mouse tumors to provide P01 investigators with biological materials that have been subjected to extensive characterization at the histologic and genetic levels (in collaboration with the Experimental Pathology Core). These materials include: serially passaged xenografts created from human pancreatic cancer specimens from primary and metastatic cancers;PDAC cell lines from our mouse models with varying tumor suppressor gene mutations; and primary mouse pancreatic ductal cells with various mutational profiles. Together, these resources should provide standardized cellular systems to facilitate experimental studies. The Core also maintains a repository of nearly all available PDAC cell lines;these have been subjected to high-resolution CGH and expression profiling, enabling investigators to retrieve needed cell lines with an appropriate genomic profile. The Core will interact closely with the Projects of the P01 to provide the biological materials and aid in the design and interpretation of experiments employing the xenografts and primary cells. The Core will seek to ensure a high level of quality control of specimens and standardization of protocols to ensure the effective translation of results between P01 Projects.
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