Standardization of the collection, analysis, and vocabularies will help accelerate future development of new, targeted cancer treatments. Standardization, which will take place at every phase from consent to collection to gene expression, will result in better patient care.
Collaboration with the participating medical centers in the mechanics of tumor collection has also improved the quality of the collected tissues. The collection of tumor samples from surgery is historically difficult to achieve rapidly, due to the number of handling and review steps required to insure that the release of that tumor sample in no way jeopardizes patient care. Nonetheless, rapid handling is a necessity in order to maintain the integrity of RNA by quickly freezing the portion of tumor released for analysis. Historically, collection efforts typically achieve a successful preservation rate of 75%. Due to close collaboration between the surgeons, pathologists, local clinical research coordinators and expO, the success rate achieved in preserving these samples was 100%. Such well-preserved tissue allows the subsequent analysis to more precisely reflect the tumor’s biology.
"We are very pleased with the significant successes the project has achieved in our first year,"?said Robert Penny, M.D., Ph.D, Executive Director of expO and Chief Medical Officer of IGC. "These findings will be of benefit to the worldwide research community."
Consortium funding for expO’s launch comes from six international pharmaceutical firms. Major sponsors are Bristol-Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Wyeth and IBM. Other sponsors are Pfizer, Aventis,
Johnson & Johnson, Flinn Foundation, ILEX Oncology, and Genomics Collaborative Inc. Research support from Affymetrix, AmeriPath, the Georgia Cancer Coalition, Agilent Technologies, Amersham Biosciences, and Telik Inc. also springboards the effort.
Major founding support was provided to IGC from Ari
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Source:International Genomics Consortium