A system for tissue arraying, automatic immunostaining and cell/tissue image analysis is requested to enhance two existing Core Facilities at Fox Chase Cancer Center (FCCC). The requested equipment will permit a seamless provision of services including construction of tissue microarrays (TMA), automatic immunostaining of TMA and regular histological sections as well as quantitation of the immunohistochemical reactions using a computer-assisted image analyzer. This system will be managed by the Tumor Bank Facility and the Histopathology Facility supported by Cancer Center Core Grant (P-30). The Core facilities are directed by experienced pathologists who share equipment and laboratory space to enhance the efficiency of the services. The Tumor Bank has accrued over 12,000 specimens of paraffin embedded neoplastic and non-neoplastic human tissues from consented surgical cases from 16 organ sites since its inception in 1990. These tissues provide precious resources for molecular, biochemical and cellular studies for the cancer biology, carcinogenesis, targeted chemotherapy and cancer prevention programs. The Histopathology Facility provides histopathology and immunohistochemistry services to investigators using experimental animal and human models. These two facilities work in close collaboration and synergize to provide the best possible pathology support to FCCC investigators. The requested shared equipment will update and enhance both pathology-associated facilities used by more than 30 Principal Investigators. The requested Advanced Tissue Arrayer will permit an efficient multi-user distribution of tissues from the same specimen, providing the exact type of histology/pathology of interest. Dako Autostainer will expedite the immunohistochemical staining process for a large number of samples. The staining results will then be analyzed by the Automated Cellular Image System III, to achieve precise, quantitative analyses of the data, avoiding the current subjective, semi-quantitative scoring method. This proposal will benefit numerous ongoing and ready to be developed projects at FCCC. Data generated from all these research projects will provide useful information in chemoprevention of breast cancer and tongue cancer, colorectal cancer chemotherapy, role of zinc in prostate carcinogenesis, DNA methylation in renal cancers, and validation of various putative cancer biomarkers. ? ? ?
| Du, G; Ng, C S; Prestwich, G D (1994) Odorant binding by a pheromone binding protein: active site mapping by photoaffinity labeling. Biochemistry 33:4812-9 |
