Researchers bank on tissue collections
Stored samples hold vital clues to cancer
by Robert Levy
The interest at these banks is purely scientific – and humanitarian.
Their "vaults" are freezers at Dana-Farber and Brigham and Women's Hospital where tumor and blood samples used in research are stored. They're an essential resource for Women's Cancers Program scientists, used in studies ranging from the genetics of breast cancer to the benefits of new chemotherapy regimens to chromosome abnormalities in ovarian cancer.
"Tissue banks make it possible to do the kind of advanced, molecular-level research on which progress against breast and ovarian cancer depends," says Andrea Richardson, MD, PhD, director of the breast tumor tissue bank. "We receive two or three requests a week from researchers interested in studying the samples stored here."
Modern technology gives scientists the ability to find many of the glitches in cancer cells' genetic programming and to connect them to a cancer's aggressiveness, its potential to spread to other parts of the body, and to withstand treatment. Investigators can also use such technology to hunt for genetic abnormalities in cancerprone families, or to sift the blood for proteins that signal the presence of newly formed tumors. But, for such research to take place, access to tumor and blood samples – and, often, to the medical histories of patients from whom they were taken – is a must.
The tissue banks have provided source material for dozens of studies over the past several years at the Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women's Cancer Center. The breast tumor bank, housed at Brigham and Women's, contains some 1,400 samples, while the breast cancer-related blood bank, housed at DFCI, has 5,500. The Dana-Farber ovarian tissue bank, established just this year, is smaller and specializes in delivering freshly removed tissue to researchers for analysis.
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