Construction and Validation of a Multi-Institutional Tissue Microarray of Invasive Ductal Carcinoma From Racially and Ethnically Diverse Populations.

BackgroundThe scarcity of tissues from racial and ethnic minorities at biobanks poses a scientific constraint to research addressing health disparities in minority populations.MethodsTo address this gap, the Minority Biospecimen/Biobanking Geographic Management Program for region 3 (BMaP-3) established a working infrastructure for a “biobanking” hub in the southeastern United States and Puerto Rico. Herein we describe the steps taken to build this infrastructure, evaluate the feasibility of collecting formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissue blocks and associated data from a single cancer type (breast), and create a web-based database and tissue microarrays (TMAs).ResultsCancer registry data from 6 partner institutions were collected, representing 12,408 entries from 8,279 unique patients with breast cancer (years 2001–2011). Data were harmonized and merged, and deidentified information was made available online. A TMA was constructed from formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded samples of invasive ductal carci...