The University of Kansas Cancer Center

Biospecimen Repository Core Facility

The University of Kansas Cancer Center has established biospecimen banking activities to coordinate the ethical collection, storage, annotation, and distribution of tissue and peripheral blood samples to support translational research. This center-wide activity is overseen by an inter-programmatic Internal Advisory Board (IAB), under the supervision of Andrew K. Godwin, PhD, within the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. Participant accrual and biospecimen banking has nearly tripled over the past year and our goal is to continue building this valuable resource so we can support all research studies requiring human specimens or histology expertise.

The BRCF has three major functions:

Identify participants, administer informed consent, collect tissue (i.e., fresh, fresh-frozen, OCT embedded, and formalin–fixed, paraffin-embedded) and bodily fluids (e.g., whole blood, plasma, serum, buffy coat, ascites fluids, urine) from selected populations, and obtain information on personal and family histories of cancer, clinical intervention and lifestyle factors for use in research. The BRCF currently has two recruiters/consenters (Laura Kuhnlein who is located at Pre-Anesthesia Testing - ext 55752 and Colleen Reilly who is located at Westwood - ext 85873). Hanluen Kuo works with The University of Kansas Hospital Pathology group to obtain and bank tissue specimens from consent patients and Zaid Naima and RaFae’ll McDaniel provide expert lab support for processing, banking and distributing bodily fluids.
Provide expert histology technical procedures and pathological evaluation of tissue samples. The core facility provides routine immunohistochemical and special histological and cytological techniques, including preparation of tissues for histopathological or cytological evaluation that involves embedding in paraffin, preparation of tissues sections, routine staining of tissues (H&E), special staining of tissue sections (PAS, trichromes, etc.) and other cytological techniques (PAP, hematological, etc.). Ashley Highfill (ext 87060), Histotechnologist, was recently hired to support these services. Ashley works with Marsha Danley and Rashna Madan to provide support for research studies.
Process and house human biospecimens obtained through investigator-initiated studies. We currently support a number of University of Kansas Medical Center investigators and are happy to provide the infrastructure to support additional studies requiring consenting, biobanking and data management.

Working in collaboration with pathologists, medical oncologists, surgeons and other hospital personnel, specially trained staff obtain patient consent, collect samples and assemble comprehensive clinical information about each donor and the corresponding samples. As part of this banking the BSR staff provides:

outstanding diagnostic pathology support
a comprehensive informed consent process for the use of tissue, blood, and/or urine from patients and participants of research
a specialized biospecimen bank devoted to the collection and distribution of specimens to support research
extensive supporting data from the clinical record and self-reported health history of each participant
fixation, paraffin processing, slide preparation and routine staining, immunohistochemistry support, tissue microarray, image analysis and digital pathology.

All specimens will be linked to comprehensive clinical databases supported by the Biostatistics and Informatics Shared Resource.