Procedures for Collecting Human Biospecimens Released || NCI Cancer Bulletin for August 7, 2012 - National Cancer Institute

NCI Cancer Bulletin for August 7, 2012 - National Cancer Institute
Procedures for Collecting Human Biospecimens Released

Procedures for Collecting Human Biospecimens Released

Preparing biospecimens for molecular analyte extraction

NCI's Office of Biorepositories and Biospecimen Research's (OBBR) cancer Human Biobank (caHUB) program has released a collection of standard operating procedures (SOPs) that guide the successful collection of postmortem normal human biospecimens for the NIH Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) project.

Successful collection of normal human biospecimens from organ and tissue donors requires complex operations and stringent quality assurance and control processes. For this reason, caHUB has created SOPs to govern the following areas:

• Ethical and regulatory procedures
• Biospecimen collecting and tracking
• Data collection, validation, and management
• Logistics management
• Pathology review

Although these SOPs apply specifically to GTEx, they can serve as a model for other scientists wishing to collect high-quality biospecimens for experimental purposes from postmortem donors.
For questions or comments about these SOPs, please contact: nciobbr@mail.nih.gov