About Us:
The Tissue Procurement Shared Resource began in 1975 with the OSUCCC
and was the impetus for the growth of the Human Tissue Resource
Network (HTRN) of The Ohio State University that receives additional
funding from other NCI banking grants, most specifically the Cooperative
Human Tissue Network (CHTN). The larger of the two grants is the
CHTN and with its presence, the TPSR benefits by the maintenance
of the HTRN infrastructure and increased knowledge of regulations
and procedures for procuring tissues as seen from the national
organization. Therefore the expertise to manage and operate the
OSUCCC's TPSR for these projects is grouped together to provide
economically efficient use of personnel for the service. The projects
mirror one another but with appropriate separation and definition
of expenditure of funding. The TPSR has received merit descriptors
of "outstanding" in the last two Comprehensive Cancer Center (CCC)
competitive renewals (1994 and 1999).
The TPSR procures and provides malignant and normal tissues from solid
tumors to the OSUCCC membership. The TPSR is part of a large tissue
bank network at OSU entitled, "The Human Tissue Resource
Network" that also includes: The NCI - funded Cooperative
Human Tissue Resource Network, the NCI - funded AIDS and Cancer
specimen resource, the Tissue Archive Services, the Research Histology
Core Facility and the Cancer and Leukemia Groups - Pathology Coordinating
office. The strong institutional and coordinated support of groups
compliments the TPSR to bring together the expertise and tools
to direct tissue resource projects such as to enhance the support
of the OSU CCC. The operation management and the technical staff
provide high quality and consistent tissue specimens that will
likely prove critical to all six of the OSU CCC scientific programs.
This service is a prospective tissue procurement service for basic
science applications and now includes pre-surgical (biopsy) and
post-surgical collection of specimens for the purpose of clinical
correlative studies by OSU CCC investigators. The TPSR staff provides
quality control of the research specimen and direct interaction
with pathologists and OSU CC investigators to better assist in
procurement of tissues and to foster hypothesis - driven cancer
research.
Goals:
- To provide a new dedicated tissue procurement service for laboratory
correlative science to be performed in conjunction with OSUCCC
- initiated clinical trials.
- To maintain the current prospective tissue procurement service
providing anonymized tissue specimens for OSUCCC basic research
investigators with quality control validation of procured tissue.
- To increase the availability and diversity of tissues for investigators.
- To improve customer service components to all users of the TPSR.
- To institute a user compliance check system for accuracy of tissue
requests based on approved IRB applications.
- To provide education to new users on HIPAA authorization for the
use of human specimens in research.