Biospecimens and Patient Registry

ABSTRACT – BIOSPECIMENS AND PATIENT REGISTRY CORE (CORE B) The goal of the Biospecimens and Patient Registry Core (Core B) is to provide the Mayo Clinic SPORE in Ovarian Cancer investigators with high quality patient clinical data, DNA, RNA, blood products, and tissues (normal and malignant) from consented patients with ovarian, fallopian tube, or primary peritoneal carcinoma and suitable controls, and to make these resources available for future studies. The Mayo Clinic has a strong tradition of ethically sound support of research that links tissue acquisition and patient data records. Paraffin embedded tissues, histological slides, and associated patient charts from surgeries performed since the first decade of the 1900's are maintained in Mayo’s Tissue Registry and the Mayo Archives. Core B interacts with i) the Pathology Research Core of the Mayo Clinic Cancer Center, which provides expertise, collaborative support, and service for immunohistochemistry, in situ hybridization, tissue microarray construction, and digital imaging; ii) the Biospecimens Accessioning and Processing Core, which is the primary site of accessioning and standardized processing of blood and frozen tissue collected explicitly for research from all three Mayo sites; and iii) the Cytogenetics Core, which has expertise in establishing, validating, and scoring fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) studies. Core B is integrated with these existing tissue-oriented Cancer Center shared resources and other scientific Cores of this SPORE to provide a coordinated, centralized, dedicated program for standardized collection, accessioning, processing, morphologic classification, and genomic annotation of biospecimens so that these can be studied in the context of patient data from fully consented patients. Thorough clinical annotation is required to maximize the potential use of tissue specimens in translational research; therefore, risk factor questionnaires, clinical records, and pathology review are incorporated into the Core. Research services, including pathologic review of tumor histology, tumor sectioning and quality control, blood processing, construction of tissue microarrays (TMAs), immunohistochemistry (IHC), and FISH, will be provided as needed to SPORE investigators. Core B is closely coordinated with the Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Core (Core C) to provide seamless linkage of clinical annotation with research specimens for data management and analyses. In Years 6-10 of Mayo Clinic SPORE in Ovarian Cancer funding, Core B distributed 4326 ovarian tumor tissues, 511 TMA slides, and 3628 germline DNA samples. In addition, Core B undertook a systematic evaluation of common ovarian cancer susceptibility genes in all stored cancer specimens and successfully collaborated with a stem cell biologist, new to ovarian cancer research, to generate a novel biospecimen—benign Fallopian tube organoids from women at average risk and high risk (BRCA1/2, RAD51C, and other carriers) of ovarian cancer. Under the direction of the Administrative Core, the Biospecimens and Patient Registry Core will continue to make biospecimens collected for this SPORE available to SPORE investigators and the ovarian cancer research community at large in order to stimulate translational research with the goal of reducing the burden of ovarian cancer.