The Institutional Tissue Bank (ITB) of Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center was established in 2006 with the goal of serving as a central repository for human tissue samples for cancer research and possible personalized medicine for the institution. The Institutional Research Board oversees the fulfilling of informed consent of each patient whose samples are collected. The ITB’s collection procedures meet the global quality standards and provide high quality tissue samples. The quality control for morphology, RNA, DNA and protein has been set up to ensure the sample quality. Routine frozen section from tissue aliquot is made for every piece of sample to ensure the component of tumor tissue and the pathological feature is the same as the diagnosed tumor. Agilent 2100 Bioanalyzer was used to provide RNA and DNA quality parameters. The Tissue Bank occupies 500 m2, with sufficient space for sample preparation and storage, data registration, data tracking/access, related equipments and monitor system. Variant samples including blood, tumor tissue, and body fluids are collected and serve as alternative permanent patient tissue records. Annotation of collected samples is captured through linking the medical record and pathological report system to tissue bank software. Frequent tumor types such as lung cancer, breast cancer, gastric cancer, urological tumors, gynecological tumors and esophageal cancers, head & neck cancers, as well as infrequent cancer types such as malignant soft tissue sarcomas, pancreatic cancer, gall bladder cancer, and other rare cancers are all collected and stored. Tumor tissues are stored with matched normal tissues. Serum and plasma are isolated from coagulation plus and coagulation minus blood samples. White blood cells are stored as well. Tissues are stored both in RNALater at -20℃ and -80℃ after snap frozen. Samples have been increased from 4,000 in 2008 to 10,783 in 2009. To the end of September 2010, over 30,000 samples has been processed and stored in our tissue bank. As planned, 50,000 samples will be stored dynamically. Over 50 funded projects have used the samples from our tissue bank. Productive papers have been published in the past years by using the samples. More and more projects will be approved to get research resources from tissue bank in the future.
The tissue bank of FUSCC has been designated as the key subject and successful model by Shanghai municipal government.