The Susan G Komen Institute for the Cure Tissue Bank at the IU Simon Cancer Centre in Indianapolis has partnered with Biostorage Technologies (BST) for storage of donated tissue specimens.
BST will store a third of the tissue bank's existing and future biological samples at its Indianapolis-based biorepository, including samples being collected during the tissue bank's upcoming breast tissue donation event on 10 January 2009.
Currently, there are few annotated collections of normal tissue available for scientific discovery in breast cancer.
To combat this shortage, the Komen Tissue Bank primarily focuses on banking specimens of healthy breast tissue from women of all ages and making them available for cancer research.
By collecting samples from women with and without breast cancer, researchers will be able to determine the differences between these populations, which could lead to a better understanding of the disease.
Samples taken from women without the disease are especially helpful because there are few collections of so-called 'normal' specimens.
The tissue bank will ultimately give researchers valuable research data.
