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Who are we ?
We are a small team who are part of the NCIC Clinical Trials Group. We handle all aspects of Tissue Banking including: Correlative Science Kit assembly and distribution, tissue requesting, tissue banking, tissue retrieval, slide preparation, paraffin block embedding, tissue microarray assembly, database management, database development, and direct correspondence with hundreds of centres in Canada and around the world.
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What is the Tumour/Tissue Bank ?
The NCIC CTG established a Correlative Science TTDR in 1997 with the support of Rhone Poulenc Rorer. A Correlative Science and Tumour Biology committee chaired by a pathologist with members which include pathologists, clinical and basic scientists, tumour banking personnel, disease site chairs and research associates from across Canada oversee the policies and activities of the bank. The NCIC CTG TTDR contains unique disease specific collections, housed, catalogued, and most importantly linked to an associated clinical dataset. This represents a "real" tumour bank in that tissue is collected from institutions across the world and housed centrally in the Department of Pathology at Queen's University.
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What is the value of the Tumour/Tissue Bank ?
Molecular genetic information on tumours is a critical component of basic, applied, and drug development research. Access to this tissue permits the assessment of prognostic factors in determining the outcome of disease, the assessment of predictive factors to various chemotherapeutic agents and treatment regimens, and facilitates the understanding of the basic biological and genetic mechanisms of cancer. This is crucial in the development of "targeted" and specific therapy. This information is vastly enriched, more valuable, and powerful when associated with a clinical trials database. This database includes demographic and patient characteristics, treatments given, toxicities, and multiple outcome measurements.
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