Tissue Procurement Service

The Tissue Procurement Service (TPS) laboratory is housed in the Surgical Pathology Lab located on the 5th floor of the James Cancer Hospital and provides both prospective procurement for OSUCCC and CHTN investigators as well as samples for Biospecimen banks such as the OSUCCC Biospecimen Services Shared Resource (BSSR) and the Total Cancer Care (TCC) program. TPS has direct access to the surgery suites in the James Cancer Hospital, Solove Research Institute and University Hospitals and occupies over 100 square foot of space within Surgical Pathology. TPS maintains constant communication with the surgical pathology staff and operating rooms and is the main work space for the collection, preparation, processing of procured specimens. Tissues and biofluids are collected per the investigator’s protocol and are provided to the researcher in various preparations including fresh, frozen and formalin-fixed and include tissue types such as malignant, benign, diseased, and normal. TPS also works with the Department of Pathology’s Autopsy Services to collect biospecimens from eligible autopsies.

NCI Best Practices for Biospecimen Resources and ISBER Best Practices for Biorepositories guidelines and standard operation procedures are followed for biospecimen acquisition, procurement and banking. Upon the day of surgery, the operating room contacts TPS when the specimen is removed and can be retrieved. TPS matches the Pathology requisition with the specimen container sticker and brings both back to the Pathology Lab.

Within the Gross Room, specimens are inked and sectioned according to OSUMC guidelines. The desired amount of surgical remnant tissue not needed for diagnosis is procured by the anatomic pathology technologist and/or pathologist assistant. The amount of tissue needed for research is determined by filtering all of the matching investigator requests from our investigator management database. Once filtered, the anatomic pathology technologist will use the amount of tissue procured to determine which investigator requests can be served. The tissue is prepared according to the investigators request. Once tissues are procured limited patient data is entered into a secure donor database and assigned a coded, unique ID. The donor database creates specimen labels that are printed and placed on the specimen vials. A representative piece of tissue is taken for quality control and evaluation is conducted by a certified pathologist to confirm diagnosis and quality of the specimen.

All samples are annotated with patient demographics including age, race and gender. If available, a de-identified pathology report is also provided for each sample.

Biospecimens are shuttled to the Polaris Innovation Centre, 2001 Polaris Parkway, for sorting and assigned to banking locations in the biorepository. The biorepository occupies approximately 1,800 sq. ft. of space and is comprised of 3, -190 degree Celsius liquid nitrogen freezers, 49, -80 degree Celsius freezers and 10, -20 degree Celsius freezers.

Fresh biospecimens are shipped to investigators the same day they are procured while frozen biospecimens are temporarily stored in the -80 degree freezer until ready for shipping. Formalin fixed paraffin embedded specimens are stored ambient until ready to be shipped as well. Biospecimens banked for long term preservation and storage are placed in the liquid nitrogen freezers.

The biorepository is equipped with a Rees Scientific monitoring system to secure the integrity and quality of samples. Freezer and refrigerator units are automatically monitored 24/7 by wireless probes installed in each unit designed to provide the ultimate high-security environmental monitoring. The system notifies designated emergency response team members of fluctuations in unit temperatures who react accordingly to safeguard samples. The Polaris facility also features a 480 Volt QST30 Cummins emergency generator that is capable of producing 750 KW of electricity in the event of a power failure.

Tissue Procurement Service shipping and distribution personnel are located on the first floor of Polaris occupying approximately 350 square feet. Samples ready for distribution are organized and sorted and quality control is confirmed prior to contacting investigators to schedule shipments. All staff that package, secure materials for transport, and ship are required to adhere to International Air Transport Association (IATA) regulations and OSU Environmental Health and Safety training.