The repository is responsible for tissue collection, storage, data management as well as conducting prognostic indicators and diagnostics. The collection of specimens from patients undergoing surgical procedures at Howard University Hospital is being conducted through a collaboration of the Surgery and the Pathology Departments. A database with the specimens de-identified has also been created. The collected specimens are from a variety of tissue sites including breast, colon, rectum, stomach, ovary and liver.

Normal and malignant and benign tumor-containing tissue is collected from primary tumors in a variety of sites. The organ/gross specimen is transported to the surgical pathology suite by the operating room nurse or house staff. Dr. Naab or an assigned senior pathology resident and the technician assigned to the acquisition of tissue for the tissue repository is then paged. Within one hour of arrival, the specimen will be opened in a sterile manner. The amount of tumor is then assessed. If remnant tumor tissue is available, it will be harvested in a sterile manner using a disposable scalpel on a sterile chux. If possible, three 5 mm cubes of tissue should be harvested and placed in a sterile centrifuge tube which has been marked, using an indelible marker, with an assigned number which includes the date and an abbreviation of the site, e.g. 101306BT1. Three 5 mm cube of grossly normal tissue should be harvested which should be located ideally 2 or more cm from the tumor mass. A frozen section will be prepared from tumor tissue immediately adjacent to the cube of tumor tissue harvested in order to confirm the presence of malignancy. When grossly recognizable malignancy is evident in regional lymph nodes, a cube from an involved node will also be harvested in a sterile manner. Fresh scalpel blades will be used for each specimen in order to avoid cross contamination. When insufficient tissue is available for submission, a scraping of the malignancy should be made and transferred to a sterile tube. The tubes containing the tissue samples or scrapings will be labeled and capped. The samples will then be snap frozen in the dewar containing liquid nitrogen which has been brought by the technician. The primary source of liquid nitrogen will be available in Howard University Cancer Center. The technician will then retrieve the tubes after one minute and will transport the specimens to the Howard University Cancer Center in a closed styrofoam container. The samples will be temporarily placed in an ultraslow temperature (-170 degree Centigrade) freezer housed in the Howard University Cancer Center. Data bases linking the samples and the exact patient demographics are maintained in a password protected file housed in the Howard University Cancer Center and the Department of Pathology. The long term storage of the samples has not been established but evaluations of various facilities are ongoing.