Biological specimens are the centerpiece ot research efforts geared to translate laboratory discoveries into patients. High quality procurement, processing, diagnosis, annotation, storage, and distribution of pathology tissue specimens are vital to translational research. Approximately 1000 radical prostatectomies are performed per year at our institution and we currently have over 14,000 such patients in our database, 6.5% of which are from African Americans. We have collected fresh frozen prostate tumor tissues from more than 1900 patients, represented by more than 7000 frozen tissue blocks. We have created tissue microarrays containing prostate cancer from 926 patients, most with long term follow-up. Core B has the following Specific Aims: 1)To maintain and enhance a repository of prostate tissues containing a wide range of neoplastic and non-neoplastic samples from both fresh frozen and paraffin blocks, prostatic fluids, DMA, RNA, and protein, and, to distribute these samples to SPORE and other investigators;2) to provide high quality histopathologic diagnoses of tissue specimens and tissue microarrays;3) To perform well-controlled immunohistochemistry (IHC) assays, interpretation and quantitative analyses of IHC slides to facilitate individual research projects;4) To continue to design, produce and distribute tissue microarrays using human prostate tissues, cell lines, and xenografts;5) To continue to improve and add tools to our open source tissue microarray database and software (TMAJ) (http://tmaj.pathology.jhmi.edu) including the development of new open source image analysis tools """"""""FRIDA"""""""" (FRamework for Image Dataset Analysis) while ensuring compatibility with the CaBIG grid system. 6) To test emerging software tools, such as CaTissue, from the CaBIG program for specimen banking efforts, serving as a model for other SPOREs and other research programs throughout our University. 7) To provide a facility and pathology expertise for laser capture microdissection;8) To continue to function as the Central Pathology Core for the Inter-Prostate SPORE Biomarker Study (IPBS). The continued enhancement of these resources will facilitate development of biological markers geared to disease prevention, diagnosis, assessment of prognosis, prediction for drug treatment response, and monitoring response to therapy?developments needed to achieve the ultimate goal of eliminating suffering and death from prostate cancer.
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