PCBN Video (Text Version)
Title: The Prostate Cancer Biorepository Network (PCBN)
Investigators: Bruce Trock, MPH, PhD, Johns Hopkins University; Jonathan Melamed, MD, New York University; Anuradha Gopalan, MD, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; Robert Vessella, PhD, University of Washington
Trock: The Prostate Cancer Biorepository Network, we call it the PCBN for short-it's a repository of prostate tissues that can be used for prostate cancer research. And we collect these tissues at Johns Hopkins, at Memorial Sloan Kettering, at University of Washington, and New York University, and we provide these tissues to prostate cancer researchers all over the world.
Vessella: The acquisition of these clinical samples is not an easy task; so, many investigators in smaller universities don't have access in their own university to clinical samples, and we share these resources with these other investigators.
Trock: These tissues can be anything from as simple as a tube of blood or urine to biopsy tissue, to tissue from the primary prostate tumor, or even tissues from metastatic disease when the tumor has spread throughout the body. And we not only provide the tissue, but we have very rich data - clinical data, treatment data, demographic data, outcome data - so that a researcher can look at the molecular characteristics of the tumors and correlate them with what happened to those particular patients.
Gopalan: We have a centralized database where specimens-the IDs of specimens-are anonymized, and it's only known to certain individuals who are vetted by the IRB and HBUC of the institution. It's easily searchable and it's well annotated.
Melamed: The PCBN plays a very important role in providing, biospecimens to researchers who come from a variety of settings. Even those affiliated with medical centers and hospitals are not able to get the number of biospecimens that will enable a statistically relevant analysis.
Trock: One of the reasons we have samples from four institutions in the PCBN is that each of the institutions brings different strengths to this repository. At Hopkins, we probably do more prostate cancer surgery than almost any place in the world. But the patients that are represented in the Hopkins' component of the biorepository may not be broadly representative of all prostate cancer patients.
Melamed: New York University has access to hospitals of the Public Hospital System of New York City that have access to the ethnically underrepresented groups, and particularly to African American prostate cancer patients.
Trock: There's a lot of interest in trying to understand why African American men have higher rates of prostate cancer than white men. So, our partners at New York University who work closely with the VA Hospitals in New York City and some of the large urban hospitals there are helping to fill in that gap. We also are increasing our focus on getting specimens of actual metastatic tissue-tumor tissue that has spread to other parts of the body-and ultimately causes the death of the patient. At the University of Washington, they've been doing that probably longer than anybody.
Vessella: We've been in this field for 25 years. Our main expertise is prostate cancer bone metastasis. But we also spend a tremendous amount of time in collecting specimens so we can study prostate cancer bone metastasis in real time, using clinical samples and then clinical samples implanted into mice, so that we develop human tumor xenografts in those immune-compromised mice.
Trock: And finally, it's important to get specimens from men who are in clinical trials, whose disease has spread and are getting treated with new chemotherapies or other targeted therapies or immunotherapies, and they have a very strong program there at Sloan Kettering.
Gopalan: The unique strengths of MSKCC are that we accrue a variety of prostate cancer related biospecimens from different demographic and clinical cohorts. We have advanced pathology and clinical reporting systems, and we have a well-defined infrastructure.
Trock: We are what we refer to as a virtual biorepository. Each institution for the most part keeps their tissues at their own institution, and when we get a request from a researcher asking for particular types of tissues, then we look at the catalog of tissues we have available at all four institutions, and we decide which set of tissues can best meet the needs of that particular researcher. So, at Hopkins we coordinate all this.
Melamed: In the process of evaluating requests, we have to be aware that these are very precious biospecimens that are collected over years, which therefore are required to be used in the best fashion.
Gopalan: The proposal has to be scientifically sound, and it has to have a valid objective. Second, the PI and the institution who are requesting the tissues, should have the resources and the experience necessary to carry out the study. And thirdly, we expect that the amount of samples that they've asked for, or the number of samples requested, have to be reasonable.
Trock: And we track all of the requests that come in. We track the feedback from the researchers, because after we send them tissues, we want to know how well did they perform? Did they have any particular problems? And another thing we do at the coordinating center, is we periodically notify the research community of new resources or new techniques that we might have available.
Vessella: Through the network of annual meetings, like the American Association of Cancer Research or the Prostate Cancer Foundation, investigators around the world know that we have these specimens.
Melamed: We send out mass emails announcing our existence and have posters and publications which also enable the word to get out to investigators. However, even with all that, we could still do so much more, and we would like the word to get out as much as possible.
Trock: One of the really extraordinary things about what the Department of Defense has done is they are one of the few funding organizations that funds this kind of resource. Most other funding organizations will fund research projects, but will not fund an infrastructure resource like this. And we feel that this kind of focus that has changed, with an acceptance of the need for these biorepositories, is really helping speed up prostate cancer research.