Flores Idhaliz, Muñoz-Antonia Teresita, Matta Jaime, García Miosotis, Fenstermacher David, Gutierrez Sylvia, Seijo Edward, Torres-Ruiz Jose', Pledger W Jack, Coppola Domenico
1 Department of Microbiology, Ponce School of Medicine and Health Sciences , Ponce, Puerto Rico .
Biopreserv Biobank. 2011 Dec;9(4):363-71. doi: 10.1089/bio.2011.0028. Epub 2011 Nov 10.
Population-based studies are important to address emerging issues in health disparities among populations. The Partnership between the Moffitt Cancer Center (MCC) in Florida and the Ponce School of Medicine and Health Sciences (PSMHS) in Puerto Rico (the PSMHS-MCC Partnership) was developed to facilitate high-quality research, training, and community outreach focusing on the Puerto Rican population in the island and in the mainland, with funding from the National Cancer Institute. We report here the establishment of a Tissue Biobank at PSMHS, modeled after the MCC tissue biorepository, to support translational research projects on this minority population. This facility, the Puerto Rico Tissue Biobank, was jointly developed by a team of basic and clinical scientists from both institutions in close collaboration with the administrators and clinical faculty of the tissue accrual sites. The efforts required and challenges that needed to be overcome to establish the first functional, centralized cancer-related biobank in Puerto Rico, and to ensure that it continuously evolves to address new needs of this underserved Hispanic population, are described. As a result of the collaborative efforts between PSMHS and MCC, a tissue procurement algorithm was successfully established to acquire, process, store, and conduct pathological analyses of cancer-related biospecimens and their associated clinical-pathological data from Puerto Rican patients with cancer recruited at a tertiary hospital setting. All protocols in place are in accordance with standard operational procedures that ensure high quality of biological materials and patient confidentiality. The processes described here provide a model that can be applied to achieve the establishment of a functional biobank in similar settings.
基于人群的研究对于解决人群健康差异方面的新问题很重要。佛罗里达州的莫菲特癌症中心（MCC）与波多黎各的庞塞医学院和健康科学学院（PSMHS）建立了合作关系（PSMHS - MCC合作关系），以促进针对波多黎各岛和美国大陆波多黎各人群的高质量研究、培训及社区推广，该合作由美国国立癌症研究所资助。我们在此报告，以MCC组织生物样本库为蓝本，在PSMHS建立了一个组织生物样本库，以支持针对这一少数族裔人群的转化研究项目。这个名为波多黎各组织生物样本库的设施，是由来自两个机构的基础和临床科学家团队与组织采集点的管理人员和临床教员密切合作共同开发的。本文描述了在波多黎各建立首个功能完备、集中化的癌症相关生物样本库所需的努力以及需要克服的挑战，并确保其不断发展以满足这一服务不足的西班牙裔人群的新需求。由于PSMHS和MCC的共同努力，成功建立了一种组织采集算法，用于获取、处理、存储和对在一家三级医院招募的波多黎各癌症患者的癌症相关生物样本及其相关临床病理数据进行病理分析。所有现行方案均符合确保生物材料高质量和患者隐私的标准操作程序。这里描述的过程提供了一个模型，可应用于在类似环境中建立功能完备的生物样本库。
