The objective of this proposal is to establish a regional Tissue Procurement Service at The Ohio State University as part of a national Human Tissue Distribution Network. This service will provide the regional and national research community with benign and malignant human tissues from adults as well as blood cells from leukapheresis specimens. Through a cooperative agreement with the Children's Cancer Study Group (CCSG) it will also provide scarce pediatric neoplasms for researchers. The use of fresh human tissues for cancer research is based on the high availability of such material, most of which is currently discarded. It avoids the problems inherent in animal research, i.e. expense, logistics, public objections, and biological variations among species. A communications network will be established to match investigators' needs with tissues available from the regional centers. These will be prioritized by agreement among the principal investigators. The model proposed will utilize the services of CompuServe, a well-established commercial computer information network based in Columbus, Ohio. It has the advantage of already serving over 250 metropolitan areas and can be accessed by local phone call by over 85% of the population of the United States. No new major computer hardware will be required using this approach. Once a request is received, the service personnel will check tissue availability from daily surgical schedules from the entire city. They will obtain specimens directly from the operating rooms, prepare fresh sterile samples under the direction of the surgical pathologist (patient needs will always be given first priority), place in sterile medium and package and ship in secure, temperature-controlled containers by the most efficient carrier. The quality of the specimens will be ensured by immediate frozen section diagnosis on all tumors followed by permanent section verification by expert pathologists. Patients identities will be protected, but all pertinent medical information and pathology reports will be maintained and will be available to investigators. Requests for pediatric materials will be sent to the CCSG Pathology Center at Children's Hospital in Columbus. From there, the participating CCSG hospitals will be notified and samples provided in a similar manner.
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