%0 Journal Article
%T National Mesothelioma Virtual Bank: A Platform for Collaborative Research and Mesothelioma Biobanking Resource to Support Translational Research
%A Waqas Amin
%A Anil V. Parwani
%A Jonathan Melamed
%A Raja Flores
%A Arjun Pennathur
%A Federico Valdivieso
%A Nancy B. Whelan
%A Rodeny Landreneau
%A James Luketich
%A Michael Feldman
%A Harvey I. Pass
%A Michael J. Becich
%J Lung Cancer International
%D 2013
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2013/765748
%X The National Mesothelioma Virtual Bank (NMVB), developed six years ago, gathers clinically annotated human mesothelioma specimens for basic and clinical science research. During this period, this resource has greatly increased its collection of specimens by expanding the number of contributing academic health centers including New York University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Marketing efforts at both national and international annual conferences increase awareness and availability of the mesothelioma specimens at no cost to approved investigators, who query the web-based NMVB database for cumulative and appropriate patient clinicopathological information on the specimens. The data disclosure and specimen distribution protocols are tightly regulated to maintain compliance with participating institutions¡¯ IRB and regulatory committee reviews. The NMVB currently has over 1120 annotated cases available for researchers, including paraffin embedded tissues, fresh frozen tissue, tissue microarrays (TMA), blood samples, and genomic DNA. In addition, the resource offers expertise and assistance for collaborative research. Furthermore, in the last six years, the resource has provided hundreds of specimens to the research community. The investigators can request specimens and/or data by submitting a Letter of Intent (LOI) that is evaluated by NMVB research evaluation panel (REP). 1. Introduction The National Mesothelioma Virtual Bank (NMVB) was developed in 2006 to stimulate the good of mesothelioma patients, collaborative efforts are made to collect and distribute well-annotated high-quality mesothelioma specimens to facilitate the research utilizing these specimens and encouraging basic, translational, and developmental studies [1]. The NMVB is funded by the Center of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in association with the National Institute of Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH) [2, 3]. There are four academic health centers which have New York University School of Medicine (NYU), University of Pennsylvania (U. Penn), Mount Sinai School of Medicine (MSSM), and University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) [2, 4¨C6]. With the collective efforts, NMVB is devoted to provide specimens from more than 1100 mesothelioma prospective and retrospective consented cases. NMVB provides fresh frozen, paraffin embedded blood products and three distinct tissue microarrays (TMA) to facilitate the areas in mesothelioma research that includes biomarkers study, immunology, genetics, and
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/lci/2013/765748/