Services
- Biospecimen Shared Resource (BSSR) services include 1) screening, consenting, and enrolling patients for biospecimen collection studies; 2) plasma, buffy coat, serum, and peripheral blood mononuclear cell isolation and cryopreservation; 3) rapid acquisition of surgical tissue and fresh biopsies for development of patient-derived xenografts (PDXs), cell cultures, and organoids; 4) clinical annotation, quality assessment and quality control of biospecimens; and 5) facilitating tissue retrieval and processing.
- The BSSR maintains a growing biobank collected from diverse anatomical sites with an online clinically annotated database of its stored biospecimens. The BSSR collects tumors, non-neoplastic tissue, peripheral blood, CSF and cystic fluid samples. This includes neoplastic and non-neoplastic samples from multiple organs such as lung, kidney, liver, breast, pancreas, thyroid, thymus, lymph nodes, gastro-intestinal track, and soft tissue.
- The BSSR also facilitates non-interventional trials (NITs) that involve biospecimen collection, providing services that support protocol development and regulatory, data management, participant recruitment and retention, and study-specific biospecimen acquisition, processing, and distribution.
- The BSSR collects samples in inpatient and outpatient settings from the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami Hospital, Jackson Memorial Hospital, and the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute. Through the BSSR, investigators have access to an array of specimens collected from these sites, as well as to specimens collected in more broadly based multi-institutional studies.
Biospecimen Request Process
BiospecimenRequest
- Investigator submits Biospecimen Request Form to the BSSR
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BACReview
- Biospecimen Adjudication Committee (BAC) reviews biospeciment requests
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BiospecimenDistribution
- BSSR distributes approved biospecimens to investigator
- The Biospecimen Adjudication Committee (BAC) reviews the following: IRB approval; hypothesis; study aims; methods; type of biospecimen; amount requested; statistical plan; and budget.
Resources
- BSSR equipment includes histology equipment, including a cell separator (autoMACS Pro Separator); slide scanner (Olympus VS 120); tissue culture equipment, including incubator, cytospin, cell-counter, inverted microscope, double headed microscope, two biosafety cabinets, chemical hood, and laboratory oven; centrifuges, including a refrigerated centrifuge and a refrigerated high-speed centrifuge (Beckman Allegra X-15R); and sample storage equipment, including -80°C and -18°C freezers, 4°C refrigerators, and Dewar’s cryogenic storage tanks.
- The BSSR stores long-term biobanked biospecimens in the University of Miami’s Hussman Institute for Human Genomics (HIHG) Center for Genome Technology (CGT), in an Azenta A3 Store Performance Blue system that provides cost-efficient, large-scale, -20°C storage, and enables flexible and efficient automated cherry-picking retrieval of samples from storage.
- The BSSR uses Open Specimen, a biobanking laboratory information management system (LIMS) that allows for the collection of clinical data associated with the banked samples and provides a dynamic searchable public catalog of de-identified data that investigators can access to browse the biobank inventory and to filter specimens by disease, collection site, demographics, and other relevant metadata.