Paraffin Tissue Bank
The University Of Nebraska Medical Center Paraffin Tissue Bank (PTB) was established to support clinical and translational research through easy access to formalin fixed, paraffin embedded human tissue.
The PTB is under the leadership of the Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology at UNMC and housed in the Tissue Science Facility (TSF) in partnership with the Tissue Procurement Shared Resource (TPSR). The PTB director is Kurt Fisher, MD, PhD, and the research coordinator is Artem Pachikov.
The PTB is made up of paraffin-embedded human tissue from a variety of neoplastic and nonneoplastic diseases and paired normal samples. This excess formalin fixed material was not necessary for diagnosis and obtained from patients who have consented for scientists to use this extra material for research purposes. It is procured, processed, and embedded within 4 weeks of the completion of pathologic analysis after surgery. The bank currently contains over 2,000 blocks from a variety of organs and disease processes with new specimens being accrued every week.
Central to the PTB’s operation is the novel management system, Nebraska Cancer Analytic Research System (NECARES). This online database offers UNMC researchers the means to search the bank’s inventory in a de-identified fashion, making it more efficient to find and acquire tissue for research projects. In the future, NECARES will give researchers the ability to perform searches on a large number of variables typically recorded in the pathology report, as well as PTB staff will be able to link to patient information with proper IRB approval and consent.
The NECARES database was created to catalog tissue in the PTB via the Cancer Synoptic Worksheets and utilizing SNOMED encoding. These standardized reports generated by pathologists as a part of standard patient care allow for easy searching of a number of prognostic and descriptive variables of tumors from more than 84 organ systems. The goal of NECARES is to represent the data in a way that is useful to researchers. NECARES was developed by the team of Dr. Scott Campbell, Dr. James Campbell, Phil Colbert and Jay Pedersen. Learn about the team’s other projects.
Pricing
| Service | Price | Quantity |
| De-identified tissue from PTB | ||
| Tissue procurement - Unstained slides | $5.50 | per slide |
| Tissue procurement during non-business hours | $30.00 | per sample |
| Core Tissue, sub-block, 1, 2, or 3mm punch | $20.00 | per punch |
| Paraffin Curls | $3.50 | per block |
| Review of slides by pathologist | $45.00 | 15 minutes |
| Slide Box | $6.50 | 100 Slide Capacity |
| Fresh procurement/special processing | $22.00 | Per sample |
| Note: Tissue microarray (TMAs) with designated construction by the UNMC Paraffin Bank, Coming Soon. | ||
| Material from clinical archives (Nebraska Medicine Anatomic Pathology archives) |
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| Slide requests for research purposes to the Nebraska Medicine Slide Room (2009-present) |
$2.00 | per case, slide or block |
| Request to pull and return blocks for research purposes by the PTB Staff | $2.00 | per block |
| Slides/Blocks (prior to 2009) | $70.00 | per case, slide or block |
Note: All PTB fees are issued separately from those charged by the Tissue Science Facility for staining and image analysis. Please see the TSF website for more information.
Additional fees may be applied for special distribution, shipping or handling (if applicable).
Kurt W. Fisher, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor, UNMC Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology
Associate Director, UNMC Tissue Procurement Shared Resource Bank, Fred and Pamela Buffett Cancer Center & Department of Pathology
Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center, Full Member