The Mizzou OneHealth Biorepository (OHB) provides centralized services for procuring, obtaining, processing, and storing human biospecimens for approved translational research projects.
The OHB supports all members of the MU biomedical research community, serves as the tissue bank of the Ellis Fischel Cancer Center, and collaborates with the Siteman Cancer Center's Biorepository at Washington University in St. Louis.
The biorepository was established to standardize collections and, in return, provide high-quality tissue for IRB-approved biomedical research projects. These specimens are not required for diagnostic purposes and would otherwise be discarded. Our inventory contains more than 1.2 million paraffin blocks and 1,300 frozen tissue aliquots from about 500 normal, benign and malignant specimens.
Since late 2018, the biorepository prefers to process mainly consented identified tissue.
- De-identified, non-consented tissue is very helpful for "proof" of technique, methodology, or concept and usually only requires a Human Subjects Research Determination Form be filled out and submitted to IRB. However ongoing medical record information from the subject cannot be obtained without an approved IRB application.
- Consented tissue is preferred and allows the subject to decide the type of studies to be performed by MU investigators. A helpful requirement is that the subjects' medical record can be reviewed annually, which adds abundant treatment information to the database.
The OHB can procure many specimen types. The OHB provides a variety of common tissue paraffin blocks. If not accessible, Siteman TPC Biorepository has requested OHB to communicate on behalf of the MU investigator to see what tissue is available at their institution. For questions regarding existing tissue and quantity at both the OHB and Siteman TPC, please log in to the OHB Portal to register and place your query.
