Human Tissue Acquisition & Pathology Resource

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PROVIDED. The Human Tissue Acquisition and Pathology (HTAP) Resource has been in operation since 1989. The tissue banking function began at our adult affiliated hospitals and collected a variety of benign and malignant tissues that number in the thousands of specimens. Later additions have increased our expertise in tumor banking generally, to include prostate cancer (Prostate SPORE), breast cancer (Breast SPORE), and childhood tumors (Pediatric Oncology Program). The Resource has senior pathologists at all major teaching hospitals, including St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital, Texas Children's Hospital, Ben Taub General Hospital, and the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Administration Medical Center. Tissue is procured and snap-frozen in the frozen section area/operating room to ensure RNA integrity. All samples are indexed and annotated with clinical and pathological parameters. Services (tissue processing, sectioning, special stains, immunohistochemistry) are also provided. In recent years we have created tissue microarrays and produced high-resolution images (Bliss system) of a virtual slide. We have arrayed over 1700 patients with over 12,000 cores. Our immunohistochemistry capabilities have been expanded with the addition of an automated DAKO immunostainer. We also offer Laser Capture microdissection (PIXEL II) for a reasonable fee. We are currently developing automated image analysis capabilities as well as a web-based data bank that will be accessible to all BCMCC researchers. All requests for services/tissue are submitted to the Resource Allocation Committee (RAC) for evaluation. In conjunction with a statistician, a power analysis is done for the proposed study as part of the approval process. The Resource is led by Thomas Wheeler, M.D., and Pamela Younes, M.S.