Clinical Core

PROJECT SUMMARY: CLINICAL CORE The objective of the C-SiG Clinical Core is to provide a user-friendly, one-stop service to access digestive disease-related biospecimens for Center members. Under the direction of Dr. Lisa Boardman, a well- established clinician scientist with IRB and biobanking expertise, the organization and infrastructure of the C-SiG Clinical Core provides essential expertise and personnel to advise and interact with C-SiG members in pursuit of two Specific Aims: First, to centralize and expedite access to GI biospecimens for C-SiG members. Second, to enhance existing individual GI-related biobanks operating within the Clinical Core umbrella and develop new repositories. To achieve these aims C-SiG Clinical Core: i) Integrates existing tissue collections and annotated data into a collaborative web-based organizational structure that is easily accessible by C-SiG members; ii) Expedites institutional IRB protocol/biospecimens committee approval and coordinates priority access for C-SiG members to expert intramural biospecimens processing services; and iii) Facilitates the initiation of new biobanks that will focus on new diseases or types of biospecimens not currently collected by existing biobanks, including the development of the new C-SiG Biobank, and iv) Develops and implements software tools that support digestive disease-related biobank endeavors. The Core integrates existing resources from individual investigators in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology and from institutional biospecimens repositories, providing a cost-effective approach to collaboratively translate GI signaling paradigms into human tissues. Additionally, the C-SiG Clinical Core has developed strong partnerships with the IRB, anatomic pathology frozen section laboratories (aka TRAG; source of all surgical biospecimens), and the Pathology Research Core (facility that performs tissue sectioning, immunostaining, etc.). These partnerships allow C-SiG Clinical Core personnel to expedite movement of protocols and projects through these key institutional resources. The primary services offered by the C-SiG Clinical Core are IRB protocol development support, biospecimens request support (including identification of appropriate tissues, pathology review, & coordinating tissue processing), and biobank support services (IRB protocol templates, tissue inventory management software, standardized questionnaires, daily searches of the surgical list for potential biospecimens to be acquired from surgical and/or endoscopy procedures for approved IRB protocols, and limited study coordinator support for consenting). In response to C-SiG member feedback, we have recently added services to support the collection of stool for human microbiome research and are developing an organoid-related service line. The C-SiG Clinical Core services have been used by 54% of the current Center members and have supported 96 publications in the past 4.5 years.