Studies of normal and malignant human hematopoietic cells (including immune cells (T, B, monocytes), bone marrow progenitors and stem cells) encompass the entire spectrum of cancer research, from basic mechanisms to new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches. However, generating sufficient numbers of specific primary human cells for such studies often requires leukopheresis capability (e.g. to obtain large numbers of normal donor peripheral blood mononuclear cells for purification of T cells), access to patient samples, large scale purification methodology (necessitating large scale antibody production for immunomagnetic approaches), quality control, cell freezers, inventory and database infrastructure (especially for patient samples) that are beyond the resources of individual laboratories. This """"""""functional"""""""" inaccessibility to primary human hematopoietic and immune cells could be solved by a Shared Resource that efficiently and economically provides primary human cells to a wide group of researchers, a resource that does not currently exist at the University of Miami. Such a resource would significantly enhance and expand ongoing cancer research, as well as research in human immunology, hematology and infectious disease. The goal of this proposal is to establish the Cell Purification and Banking Facility (CPBF) to provide viable, purified primary human hematopoietic cells (normal T cells, B cells, monocytes, CD34 stem cells and primary leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma isolates) to cancer researchers at the University of Miami. To accomplish this, the CPBF will integrate recently established infrastructure components (Research Apheresis Unit, Cell Purification Unit (including antibody production and quality control), Cell Bank and an inventory/sample database (with a web-based search and ordering interface) into a single Shared Resource. In addition, the CPBF will provide banking, inventory and database services for cancer-related clinical trials that are collecting cell samples for research.
