Human Tissue and Organ Research Resource

National Disease Research Interchange, Philadelphia PA

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The National Disease Research Interchange (NDRI) is the only not-for-profit organization supported by the NIH that provides a diverse collection of normal and diseased human biospecimens to biomedical researchers in academia, government and industry. The Human Tissue and Organ Research Resource (HTOR) of NDRI is an important resource to the biomedical research community because it provides high quality biospecimens, customized to researcher's requests, at an affordable cost. It is critical that HTOR expands its network of biospecimen acquisition sites to meet the increasing demands of researchers for human biospecimens for studies of both normal human physiology and the pathological basis of disease. This will be accomplished by, 1) communicating the HTOR mission and programs to the biomedical research community, as well as improving researcher application, protocol development and service delivery processes (Aim 1); 2) increasing the capacity and capability of the HTOR nationwide tissue acquisition network to procure and distribute greater quantities of high quality normal and disease human biospecimens of greater diversity (Aim 2); 3) maintaining HTOR compliance with current HHS, HIPAA and NIH guidelines and regulations governing donor consent, donor confidentiality, security of personal information, as well as HTOR personnel and researcher biohazard compliance (Aim 3); 4) expanding the National Rare Disease Biospecimen Resource and developing the National HIV Biospecimen Resource to provide greater service to the rare disease and HIV research communities, respectively (Aim 4), and 5) informing the government and scientific/lay public of the impact of HTOR-supported research projects on the biomedical research community and the resultant advances in medical research, as well as raising awareness of the value of human tissue donations for research (Aim 5). Implementation of this research plan will support the current trends in biomedical research that are placing greater emphasis on "bench-to-bedside" translational research, biomarker development and pre-clinical drug development. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]