Two Biospecimen Resources Are Now GTExUK_BiobankAccepting Proposals for Collaboration

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Two Biospecimen Resources Are Now Accepting Proposals for Collaboration

Image courtesy of Broad Institute The National Institutes of Health's (NIH) Common Fund Genotype-Tissue Expression Project (GTEx) and the UK Biobank are now open for researchers to submit proposals for collaboration. GTEx is a resource for the scientific community that aims to create a comprehensive public atlas of gene expression and regulation across multiple human tissues, and it recently released a newBiospecimen Access Policy to help reach that goal. The purpose of the new policy is to allow access to biospecimens in the GTEx biobank in order to facilitate the efficient use of this valuable resource.       The new Biospecimens Access Policy governs all GTEx samples, whether renewable or non-renewable. GTEx biospecimens include: PAXgene fixed, frozen tissue; PAXgene fixed, paraffin embedded tissue; flash frozen brain samples; genomic DNA; mRNA and microRNA; and lymphoblastoid and fibroblast cell lines. Those interested in accessing GTEx biospecimens should log in to theGTEx Portal for more information about the availability, the new Biospecimen Access Policy, and all necessary request forms. If you have any questions or comments, please e-mail GTEx atnhgrigtex@mail.nih.gov.    The UK Biobank is another potentially valuable biospecimen resource for cancer researchers, which is now open for research proposals. The UK Biobank cohort consists of 500,000 adults. There are a variety of biospecimens and data available in the UK Biobank including 1700 incident breast cancers, 900 colorectal and 1500 prostate cancers, among other sites, baseline blood on everyone (although it is strictly governed), as well as detailed questionnaire data and clinical assessments of weight, blood pressure, etc. Currently, they are running a standard set of assays on the whole cohort (IGF, sex hormones, etc.) in addition to whole genome sequencing, which is expected to be available in the next year. For more information about the UK Biobank, including access procedures and other resources, visit their website.   In addition to these resources, the Epidemiology and Genomics Research Program (EGRP) has identified several other potential sources of biospecimens for investigators on our Biospecimen Resources for Population Scientists webpage. If you are aware of other resources that are not listed on our webpage, please let us know, and we will consider including them in the future.    For questions about biospecimens related to cancer epidemiology research, contact:  Danielle Carrick, Ph.D., M.H.S., EGRP Biospecimens Coordinator and Program Director, Host Susceptibility Factors Branch (HSFB) Leah Mechanic, Ph.D., M.P.H., Program Director, HSFB  Sheri Schully, Ph.D., Program Director and Lead, Knowledge Integration Team, Office of the Associate Director