Purpose and
Significance
Purpose:
To greatly
facilitate the careful acquisition, storage, and distribution of high
quality human tissue samples to UNM researchers for use in scientifically
estimable investigations while following appropriate ethical, scientific,
and legislative principles and regulations.
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The NCI Best
Practices for Biospeciment Resources, June 2007, is the guide we
use.
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In addition, regular
participation by HTR personnel in national and international meetings on
tissue banking (such as the ISBER conference) ensures that UNM HTR
operations are in line with other quality biospecimen resources.
Rationale:
Benefits to
future patients accrue because researchers are able to access well
preserved and maintained tissues that might not otherwise be available.
Benefits to UNM
HSC occur because its mission of providing quality patient care through
fostering innovative and clinically valuable research is strengthened.
Cost Efficiency
is realized by creating a single central repository that carefully
monitors the security of tissues and conducts necessary and desirable
quality assurance and quality control.
Protection of
researchers from HIPAA violations is provided in individual research
projects by an honest broker function of the HTR through dispensing
de-identified specimens devoid of the 18 HIPAA personal identifiers.
In addition,
clinical data can be obtained linked to the specimens but scrubbed of
HIPAA identifiers.
Finally, through
an objective evaluation process, the SRC enables equitable distribution of
a limited and precious resource, human tissues, for projects of scientific
merit.
