The Establishment of the First Cancer Tissue Biobank at a Hispanic-Serving Institution: A National Cancer Institute-Funded Initiative between Moffitt Cancer Center in Florida and the Ponce School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Puerto Rico

Abstract

Population-based studies are important to address emerging issues in health disparities among populations. The Partnership between the Moffitt Cancer Center (MCC) in Florida and the Ponce School of Medicine and Health Sciences (PSMHS) in Puerto Rico (the PSMHS-MCC Partnership) was developed to facilitate high-quality research, training, and community outreach focusing on the Puerto Rican population in the island and in the mainland, with funding from the National Cancer Institute. We report here the establishment of a Tissue Biobank at PSMHS, modeled after the MCC tissue biorepository, to support translational research projects on this minority population. This facility, the Puerto Rico Tissue Biobank, was jointly developed by a team of basic and clinical scientists from both institutions in close collaboration with the administrators and clinical faculty of the tissue accrual sites. The efforts required and challenges that needed to be overcome to establish the first functional, centralized cancer-related biobank in Puerto Rico, and to ensure that it continuously evolves to address new needs of this underserved Hispanic population, are described. As a result of the collaborative efforts between PSMHS and MCC, a tissue procurement algorithm was successfully established to acquire, process, store, and conduct pathological analyses of cancer-related biospecimens and their associated clinical-pathological data from Puerto Rican patients with cancer recruited at a tertiary hospital setting. All protocols in place are in accordance with standard operational procedures that ensure high quality of biological materials and patient confidentiality. The processes described here provide a model that can be applied to achieve the establishment of a functional biobank in similar settings.

FIG. 1.

Schematic representation of the PRTB Tissue Collection Algorithms. To work within the structure of the collaborating institutions, 2 alternative tissue acquisition procedures were developed, targeting either tertiary hospitals or community hospitals. These 2 algorithms differ in the location of the initial steps (preliminary interview; informed consent; and completion of questionnaire), but converge at the time of tissue accrual, processing, analysis, and storage. PRTB, Puerto Rico Tissue Biobank.

FIG. 2.

Specimen Collection in the first 15 months at the PRTB. The site distribution of the collected biospecimens shows that the highest accrual sites are breast, uterine, and colon cancers. It is of interest to note that breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among women in Puerto Rico; and colorectal cancer is the second most commonly diagnosed cancer among men and women in Puerto Rico.

FIG. 3.

Biospecimen RNA Quality. Representative RNA gel electrophoresis obtained by running RNA from samples submitted from the second QA/QC set. The presence of 2 distinct 28S and 18S ribosomal RNA bands is indicative of the quality of the RNA. Total RNA electrophoretic profile was analyzed by an Agilent Nano Chip kit using the software provided by the manufacturer for determination of RIN (RNA integrity number). An RIN value greater than 5 signifies that the RNA is not degraded and is of good quality for subsequent molecular experiments. N/A is not available.