Poster Presentation Biobanking - Blue Sky Horizons (ABNA 19th Annual Conference)

Tissue Microarrays: Turning Hidden Resources in Research Gems. (#42)

Aysen Yuksel 1 , Michael Krivanek 2 , Daniel Catchpoole 1 3
  1. The Tumour Bank, CCRU, Kids Research, The Sydney Children's Hospital Network, Westmead, NSW, Australia
  2. Department of Pathology, The Children's Hospital at Westmead (SCHN), Westmead, NSW, Australia
  3. School of Computer Science, The University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, NSW, Australia

It is expected that biobanks provide critical tissue resources to researchers to conduct fundamental investigation into disease states and to ensure the best research use of all tissue biospecimens by linking them to key questions being asked in research.  Recognizing the rarity of childhood cancers, small tumour specimen volumes, and the burgeoning need for tissue-directed research we describe here our the impact of a research focussed biospecimen resource The Tumour Bank at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead (TB-CHW) has initiated alongside the main source of all such tissue, our histopathology department. In 2012 we leveraged the hospital’s formalin fixed paraffin embedded tissue (FFPE) tissue block archive to commence a tissue microarray (TMA) construction program. Our purpose was to provide rationalised access to FFPE tissue whilst not impacting on the availability of blocks for future diagnostic or medico-legal review. Construction of the TMAs that represented a single childhood cancer subtypes required a deep dive into the block archives with blocks selected covering sample collected over a couple of decade long period or more. This resulted in a tissue resource where enough rare paediatric tumours representing all patient seen at a single centre are drawn together to provide meaningful results in their own right. The TB-CHW TMA selected blocks from the past two or more decades, establishing a workable pipeline for the construction of TMAs involving block selection, pathologist review, block construction and QA processes, staining and review, digital microscope and downstream image analyses. The program constructed 25 TMAs which has subsequently supported 21 international studies with a total of 828 individual slides released novel technical evaluation, image analyses and biological assessment that have shifted beyond routine chromogenic and immunohistochemical staining into spatial assessment of targeted regions for protein and gene expression activity as well as deep learning and artificial intelligence.