Core B: Tissue Specimen Core

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PROJECT SUMMARY – Core B (Biospecimen Core) Primary (bone marrow and thymus) and secondary (tonsil, lymph node, spleen and others) lymphoid organs are among the most dynamic tissues throughout an individual’s lifetime. The bone marrow gives rise to hundreds of billions of cells each day, the thymus educates T-cells to recognize self and non-self and tonsils, lymph nodes, spleen and others are key to daily defense against invading organisms and maintenance of cellular homeostasis. Cellular senescence in these lymphoid tissues have been observed and presumably associated with stress-induced or age-related functional impairment. However, what types or subtypes of senescent cells are present and their spatial heterogeneity in in the tissue context as well as how these cells impact the tissue environments remain poorly understood, highlighting a pressing need to map senescent cells and the surround environments in these tissues and generate biomarkers to define spatial and phenotypic heterogeneity in cellular senescence. The Biospecimen Core will fulfill a critical role in the Yale SenNet TMC to procure, process, and histologically annotate lymphoid tissue specimens for further analysis in the Biological Analysis Core to generate molecular and cellular maps of senescent cells. It will leverage and significantly expand upon the Yale Hematology Tissue Bank’s existing structure and further leverage the existing collaborations between Hematology (Dr. Halene), Pathology (Dr. Xu), Immunobiology (Dr. Craft), Laboratory Medicine and YNHH Health Data Science (Dr. Schulz), and Surgery (Dr. Kodadek) to collect lymphoid tissue and concurrent and longitudinal multi-specimen blood samples from healthy individuals. The Biospecimen Core will collect, process, aliquot, catalog, annotate high quality tissue samples and distribute these to the Yale SenNET Biological Analysis Core and SenNET investigators. The Biospecimen Core will leverage its existing Freezerworks database to integrate all data from patient to tissue aliquot and link this data to clinical and research databases in a HIPAA compliant and auditable fashion. The tissue specimens including tissue sections and biofluids are further analyzed by the Biological Analysis Core and the specimen metadata will be managed in the Data Analysis Core for integrated analysis and sharing.