Collaboration Opportunities with the Cancer Human Biobank (caHUB) at NCI

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) Biorepositories and Biospecimen Research Branch (BBRB) is sponsoring a unique initiative to advance cancer research and treatment through development of the cancer Human Biobank (caHUB), which will serve as a national center for biospecimen science and standards. caHUB will address systematically the gaps in knowledge needed to strengthen the standards for human biobanking. Via a systematic and coordinated approach, caHUB will investigate the impact of procedural and environmental variables on the quality of human biospecimens and data prior to downstream molecular analysis on various platforms. It is intended that the accumulated data from these precompetitive activities will be widely disseminated to the research community.

With this in mind, caHUB is seeking statements of capability or interest from parties interested in:

• Developing collaborative experimental designs that would result in evidence-based Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for the collection and handling of human biospecimens for specific molecular analysis platforms.
• Formulating the development of biospecimen best practices to improve biobanking standards and policies necessary to support molecular medicine.
• Developing new models for disease research and advancing molecular medicine through a systems approach using caHUB fit-for-purpose specimen sets on specific analysis platforms.
• Accelerating validation of clinical diagnostics for patients through biospecimen science aimed at understanding specimen and analyte quality requirements needed for specific platforms.

For more information, please visit http://ttc.nci.nih.gov/opportunities/opportunity.php?opp_id=3641