Solid Tumor

Cancer Center Biospecimen Bank

The Stanford Cancer Center Tissue Bank, sponsored by the Stanford Cancer Center, BioX and the Department of Pathology, is a central resource for procurement, storage and distribution of tissues for biomedical research. In September 2005 the Tissue Bank started using a new tissue registration and tracking application built on the Center for Clinical Informatic's STRIDE platform. The standards-based, highly structured data entry screens used by this system ensure high data capture quality. Terms such as organ, site and diagnosis are both classified and encoded using terms from the SNOMED controlled clinical vocabulary. The data entry fields are designed to search SNOMED for terms matching the supplied input. Since all data entry involves searching for previously defined SNOMED terms, the data capture is of the highest possible quality. Aliquot tissue blocks can be rapidly accessioned and distributed, and a "Google-style" search capability permits rapid summary reporting and retrieval of individual samples.

STRIDE Anonymous Biospecimen Locator

The Stanford Cancer Center Solid Tumor Tissue Bank was the first of a series of planned STRIDE modules for biospecimen banking data management and integration at Stanford, known collectively as the STRIDE Virtual Biospecimen Bank. The goal of the STRIDE Virtual Biospecimen Bank is to permit researchers to rapidly determine whether a specimen meeting their research needs has been banked at the School. The Pathology Core Biospecimen Locator is a simple, fully anonymized search engine for the frozen tissue samples tracked by the Cancer Center Solid Tumor Tissue Bank. Currently in 1.0 release, the user interface is still undergoing refinement and improvement. Further biospecimen data sets will be integrated over time.