Tag: medical biospecimens

Company News: Indivumed to Study the Integrity of Biospecimen Sampling Procedures for the U.S. National Cancer Institute

Analysis of biopsy sampling procedures a prerequisite for the development of future individualized cancer therapies

Hamburg-based Indivumed GmbH has been awarded a subcontract by SAIC-Frederick, Inc., under its prime contract with the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) to assess the impact of sampling procedures on the integrity of cancer biospecimens and key data derived from them.

The NCI’s Office of Biorepositories and Biospecimen Research (OBBR) is sponsoring the study to better understand how the integrity of voluntarily donated medical biospecimens—such as blood and biopsy tissue—might be compromised by the way in which they are collected and handled. Surgical and tissue sampling procedures can affect cellular processes in these biospecimens, influencing the results of research on cancer targets and mechanisms. Despite widespread use of cancer biospecimens for research, there are currently no systematic data available assessing the influence of sampling procedures on the molecular processes and compositions of the collected tissue.

Indivumed and its clinical network partners have pioneered standards to enable full control of all steps in tissue collection and clinical data collection, and are thus prepared to study the impact of intra- and post-surgical tissue processing on molecular data. For further details, please see the full announcement.