Cooperative Tissue Network

Livolsi, Virginia

Abstract

The Broad, Long-term Objective of this proposal is to enhance the ability of the Eastern Division of the Cooperative Human Tissue Network (CHTN), a collaborative effort of the National Disease Research Interchange (NDRI) and the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP), to cooperate with the National Cancer Institute (NCl) and the other CHTN divisions in a national network designed to retrieve, preserve, and distribute high quality, well-characterized human tissues to biomedical researchers throughout the United States.
The Specific Aims are to (1) Continue efforts to safely collect and process well characterized human cancer, benign, and normal tissues for delivery to researchers. (2) Expand efforts to work closely with investigators to enhance services. (3) Continue efforts to refine and expand our tissue source network to provide greater quantities and diversities of tissues and to recruit new users to increase effectiveness of the CHTN. (4) Maximize effectiveness of the CHTN through cooperation with other divisions and NCI. (5) Increase awareness of the CHTN and of the importance of human tissue to research through representation at meetings and maintenance of a researcher bibliography. Health Relatedness: Collected tissues provide an essential human model for the study of human diseases, including promising research in the area of genetic abnormalities and pre-dispositions in cancer. The quality control of diagnoses for CHTN tissues prevents erroneous findings. Research Design and Methods involve expanding current efforts including: increasing tissue sources in response to researchers' needs by providing trained technicians for retrieval at multiple sites, acquiring tissue from private donors, and adding specialized sources for difficult protocols; enhancing services to researchers, especially in decreasing time from application to first service, by leading the way in computerizing the entire CHTN network, interacting with all CHTN divisions and NCI, providing trained coordinators for ongoing protocol modification, and accessing additional patient information as needed; recruiting new researchers to increase effectiveness of the network and raising awareness of the importance of human tissue for research through mailings to NCI grantees and cancer center researchers, representation at scientific meetings, citation of the CHTN in researcher publications, visits to major research centers, and maintenance of a bibliography of publications; and ensuring that tissues are safely and optimal processed by providing biohazard warnings and guidelines to tissue handlers and offering mentor-based training and follow-up to all new technicians.