Tissue Banking and Tissue Microarrays

‚Tissue Banking‘ is an emerging concept with solid basis in translational medicine and in genetic epidemiology since allows biomedical research to flourish in several aspects: a tool for (i) biomarker identification, (ii) biomarker validation and (iii) subsequent drug discovery. Tissue banking aims to collect large number of high quality of samples process and store them in a manner that is compatible with the ‚omics‘ analysis. ‚Tissue microarray‘ have become an essential pathology tool being able to validate novel biomarkers in epidemiology scale since hundreds of tissue fragments can be analysed simultaneously. The advancement in digital pathology with whole-slide imaging and new techniques in image analysis and image databases has driven improvements in tissue samples collection and Tissue Banking.

The identification of biomarkers is essential not only for diagnostic purposes but also as predictors of disease response to new and old drugs. This necessitates the use of tissue samples collected and stored in several centres, but in order to guarantee reproducible and comparable results, the multi-centre network must use standardized protocols (SOPs) and common minimum dataset of the clinical data.

BioRep is a ‚Global Biorepository Service Provider‘ (www.biorep.it), which has implemented several Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) developed thanks to its participation in several national and international research projects. BioRep has available SOPs for: tissues procurements and management, tissue microarrays, tracking system (strong IT structure), biosafety requirements, storage and distribution.

It has assessed a code of conduct for the social, ethical and legal considerations.