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BioBank Overview
The Palm Beach Cancer Institute Foundation will provide seed funding and take primary initial responsibility for the development of a BioBank Initiative in South Florida. The BioBank's purpose is to store, by cryo-preservation, excess tumor tissue taken at the time of cancer surgery (that is, tissue not needed for any diagnostic testing that would either be discarded or stored in formalin which destroys the messenger RNA and proteins in tumor cells.) Serum samples from participating patients would also be stored in the BioBank.
In cooperation with biotech companies, academic institutions and local research institutes (i.e., Scripps), samples of the specimens will be analyzed for gene expression as well as used in protein studies with the specific objective of determining the molecular mechanisms that might be relevant to the biological behavior of that specific tumor. This type of analysis has primary relevance for targeted drug therapy for that specific tumor and patient.
The BioBank Initiative is predicated on the increasingly accepted principle that successful treatment for advanced forms of cancer, all but a few of which are incurable with existing therapies, will require customized, multi-targeted drug therapy involving agents that block specific protein interactions responsible for the malignant behavior of cancer cells. These protein interactions are the result of abnormal expression of specific genes and can vary significantly between different tumor types, among the same tumor type in different patients, at different tumor sites in a given patient, and even in different populations of cells within a single tumor from a specific site. One of the basic issues that has made the treatment of advanced cancer so challenging, and to date so unsuccessful, is that all advanced cancers are unique and made up of heterogeneous populations of cells, the product of the greatly accelerated natural selection of tumor stem cells.
Matching Clinical Information
What gives the BioBank initiative even more potential to accelerate the progress of drug discovery and development is that the BioBank will have matching clinical information. This clinical information, with the necessary patient consent, can be stored and used in a de-identified (anonymous) fashion for correlation with the information developed from the BioBank. As a result, we will have the ability to link the patients' de-identified clinical data and any genomic or proteomic data generated from that patients' tumor specimen. The ability to correlate detailed clinical information including disease course and treatment outcomes with molecular profiling of tumor tissue has not been available for a large number of patients with a broad range of tumor types.
Initial Phase
The initial (pilot) stage of the BioBank Initiative will be to work with patients and staff of the Palm Beach Cancer Institute. Once the initial structure, design and operation of the BioBank Initiative is established using the PBCI as the model participating practice, the BioBank's services and operations will be made available to other selected 'top-tier' oncology practices that use compatible electronic medical record (EMR) platforms for maintaining clinical records.
The BioBank will maintain the specimens according to terms specified in its informed consent and consistent with standards and guidelines developed by the NCI Office for Biorepositories and Biospecimen Research and will collect and maintain de-identified EMR data from participating practices. All tissues will be stored pursuant to appropriately peer-reviewed protocols.
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