The Tissue Microarray (TMA) Core facility shared resource provides a number of technologies, services and scientific consultation to support the research of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center (SKCCC) members and other Johns Hopkins University and outside investigators. In addition to TMA-related services, the laboratory has recently added routine histology services as well as consultations in and performance of immunohistochemistry (IHC) and multi-label immunofluorescence (IF) staining. The addition of these services and key personnel with vital expertise in these areas has greatly expanded the capabilities of this facility and markedly enhances the ability of SKCCC and other researchers to perform critically needed tissue leased biomarker studies. The TMA Lab has constructed 654 TMAs for 49 investigators containing 93,706 tissue Cores from 10,362 patient specimens containing tumors from the prostate, breast, pancreas, gall bladder, cervix, ovary, brain, liver, urinary bladder, salivary glands, esophagus, head and neck, thyroid and various cell lines and xenografts. Users have published more than 80 manuscripts involving this resource since the last funding period began. Instrumentation and expertise is available to automatically capture high resolution digital images of both standard histology/IHC based slides and TMA slides and the Core has greatly improved its capabilities in quantitative image analysis. Users have access to a set of Open Source web based software tools and backend database (TMAJ) that were developed to facilitate all facets of research involving TMA technology from TMA design, data entry, image diagnosis, image analysis, and publishing on the Internet.
The Specific Aims of this Shared Resource are to support and speed translational cancer research by : 1) continuing to guide production of and produce TMAs for SKCCC members and others using human surgical and autopsy specimens, human specimens from clinical trials, xenografts, animal tissue specimens and cell lines as needed;2) providing scientific consultations and services for routine histology and IHC/IF for novel cancer-associated biomarkers;3) t continuing to evaluate and update new TMA construction and slide scanning and image analyzis platforms;4) enhancing the Core's information technology platform to improve ease of use sharing of information. Lay: Our shared resource provides technology and expertise to facilitate all aspects of tissue based biomarker translational research on human biospecimens. This allows SKCCC investigators to more rapidly develop biomarkers and to help translate these biomarkers into tools that will help doctors better care for cancer patients.
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