The Mizzou OneHealth Biorepository (OHB) provides centralized services for procuring, processing, and storing human biospecimens for IRB-approved translational research projects by MU investigators. Additionally, the OHB provides a variety of histology services for research tissues.
Biospecimens
The OHB supports all members of the MU biomedical research community, serves as the tissue bank of the Ellis Fischel Cancer Center, and collaborates with the Siteman Cancer Center's Biorepository at Washington University in St. Louis.
The biorepository was established to standardize collections and, in return, provide high-quality tissue for biomedical research projects at the University of Missouri. These specimens are not required for diagnostic purposes and would otherwise be discarded from procedures performed at MU Health Care. Our inventory contains more than 7000 paraffin blocks and 10,000 frozen blood and tissue aliquots from over 3000 medical procedures.
There are both frozen and formalin-fixed embedded tissues that have been obtained in three ways:
- Under our currently active IRB-approved protocol, prospectively collected as well as stored blood and tissue biospecimens may be donated from patients with written informed consent and can be associated with relevant data from electronic medical records with IRB approval for specific projects.
- Frozen and fixed biospecimens were collected from anonymous donors after being discarded from clinical use prior to 2018. Limited data are available.
- Samples from paraffin embedded formalin fixed clinical tissue blocks that were archived by the Department of Pathology more than ten years ago may be procured in a de-identified manner for limited research uses if suitable specimens are not available from 1.
If specimens of a certain type are not available at MU, Siteman TPC Biorepository has requested OHB to communicate on behalf of the MU investigator to see what tissue is available at their institution. For questions regarding currently stored biospecimen types or prospective collections at both the OHB and Siteman TPC, please log in to the OHB Portal to register and place your query.
Histology Services
The OHB employs a certified histotechnologist and laboratory staff. OHB works with the MU Clinical Research Trials Office (CRTO) to meet tissue requirements for patients wishing to participate in clinical trials. We provide scrolls, cores, slides and tissue microarrays (TMAs) for specimens stored in the Biorepository. Additionally, processing/embedding, sectioning, a variety of special stains, and custom immunohistochemistry services are available for customer-provided biospecimens, human or animal. To see pricing and request services please log into our OHB Service Portal.
