Support at CHTN Eastern
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The Cooperative Human Tissue Network (CHTN) was initiated by the Cancer Diagnosis Program of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in 1987 to provide increased access to human cancer tissue for basic and applied scientist from academia and industry to accelerate the advancement of discoveries in cancer diagnosis and treatment.
The CHTN provides prospective investigator-defined procurement of malignant, benign, diseased and uninvolved (normal adjacent) tissues. The investigator can also choose from several methods to fix the specimen such as fresh, frozen, or chemically fixed. The CHTN also produces tissue microarrays (TMA) representing multiple tissue types to disease-specific blocks. Recently, the CHTN has approved the development within the divisions to isolate and distribute the raw nucleic acid to expand resources and to more readily serve investigator's interest. Tissues are annotated with patient demographics including gender, age, and race. Additional patient information can be requested where applicable.
Quality control assessments of tissues are provided by the CHTN principal investigators (PIs) who are actively involved in the practice of anatomic pathology. The CHTN PIs are responsible for proper histopathological characterization, participate in research and understand the importance of quality control in the tissues provided.
Specimens are shipped to investigators using IATA guidelines and under conditions supporting the fixation of the tissue. A tissue processing fee and the cost of shipping are paid by the investigator.
Since its establishment, the CHTN has provided more than 700,000 high quality specimens from a wide variety of organ sites to over a thousand investigators. Human tissues provided to investigators by the institutions involved in the CHTN have been utilized in a wide variety of research projects. To date more than 2500 peer-reviewed articles have been published many of these in high impact journals with significant contribution to cancer research. Publications have ranged from reporting mutations of protooncogenes in human tumors using mRNA to a wide range of other studies in the following areas: growth factors, isoenzymes, development of monoclonal antibodies and cell lines, studies of subcellular organelles, gene isolation/gene deletion, flow cytometry, and DNA hybridization.
Requirements for collection, storage and distribution vary depending on the type of research and type of tissue. Some studies of mRNA and labile proteins should be conducted on tissues from surgical resection which are fresh or are snap-frozen and stored at ultra-low temperatures. Other studies of more stable biological molecules can easily be investigated using tissues obtained from autopsy; these tissues can also be used in a wide range of studies including the establishment of viable tissue cultures and cell lines. The CHTN encourages all investigators to consider the necessary tissue requirements for their individual research projects. Such information provides investigators with the broadest possible number and range of research specimens.
