Prostate Cancer Tissue Resources Available for Your Research
The National Cancer Institute initially established the Cooperative Prostate Cancer Tissue Resource (CPCTR) to provide prostate cancer tissue samples with clinical annotation to researchers.
As of April 2, 2007, the CPCTR is no longer open for service for new research proposals through the National Cancer Institute. Potential collaborative research utilizing CPCTR materials with any of the Coordinating Committee members will be evaluated on an individual case by case basis.
CPCTR public database: Our web site features an on-line database. Investigators can search to determine whether the resource has the prostate cancer tissue samples they need for their research. The database is coordinated and managed by the Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI) at the University of Pittsburgh.
Consultation and interpretive services: Assistance is available from trained CPCTR pathologists. The CPCTR can provide consultative assistance in staining interpretation, and scoring, on a collaborative basis. This service is available from trained urologic pathologists familiar with prostate cancer tissue microarrays and immunohistochemical staining interpretation. For further details, please e-mail us at ask@cpctr.info.
Current resources:
We would like to inform you that CPCTR is under transition as we build the new resource. Previously funded by NCI, this resource will soon be operated from the University of Pittsburgh. Currently, we are only dealing with Tissue Microarray requests. So far as other biospecimens are concerned, we will start providing those to the investigators once additional funding is available.
Fresh Frozen & Paraffin Tissue: The resource has over 7,000 annotated cases (including 7,635 specimens and 38,399 annotated blocks).
Tissue Microarrays (TMA): The CPCTR has slides from prostate cancer TMAs with associated clinical data.
Current TMAs:
- Archival TMA
- Gleason TMA
- Hormone Refractory TMA
- Ethnicity TMA
- Outcome TMA
- Metastatic TMA
The information provided for each case on the arrays (derived from radical prostatectomy specimens) includes: age at diagnosis, race, PSA at diagnosis, tumor size, TNM stage, Gleason score and grade, and vital status and other variables.
All researchers (academic or commercial, US or foreign) may apply to the CPCTR for use of its resources.
The CPCTR TMA data file conforms to the new TMA data exchange specification (see: The tissue microarray data exchange specification: A community-based, open source tool for sharing tissue microarray data. BMC Med Inform Decis Mak. 2003;3(1):5).
Links
CPCTR’s Coordinating Committee
Publications using CPCTR’s Materials
For more information about the resource, including costs and how to apply for tissue samples, please visit our FAQ page.
