Tissue Procurement / Tissue Microarray

The Tissue Procurement Center (TPC) at the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center & Research Institute was established in 2003, in collaboration with physicians, staff and the Department of Pathology at ChristianaCare.

The TPC includes a biobank containing more than 4000 frozen and paraffin embedded specimens for future research. Additionally, more than 10,000 tumor and normal paraffin blocks are available from the Department of Pathology. The facility is equipped with a tissue arrayer for generation of tissue microarrays. Additionally, the TPC provides a supply of fresh tissues to local researchers within the Center for Translational Cancer Research as well as the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, PA. The Graham Cancer Center TPC was one of only three NCI Community Cancer Centers Program sites selected to collect specimens for The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) project. The center employs Open Specimen which allows us to produce barcoded specimen labels, de-identified pathology reports, and a data link to both our data warehouse and tumor registry.

To ensure high quality specimen collection, the procurement process includes a quality control process where control slides are reviewed by the tissue procurement medical director in conjunction with the final surgical pathology slides and report to confirm the diagnosis; the tumor type, percentage of tumor nuclei and necrosis, as well as confirmation that normal tissue is free from contaminating tumor cells is recorded.