Biospecimen Services
Please remember to cite the Shared Resources!
Research reported in this publication was supported by The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center and the National Institutes of Health under grant number P30 CA016058.
We thank the XX Shared Resource at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, Columbus, OH for (XX)
The BSSR is comprised of three arms as described below:
Arm 1: Total Cancer Care (TCC) (back to top)
TCC Director: Daniel Stover, MD
TCC Operations Director: Laura Monovich, MBA
Total Cancer Care® (TCC) provides centralized and standardized consenting, specimen procurement, annotation, storage and distribution as well as provisioning of clinical and genomic data. The protocol allows for the collection of remnant tissue from surgical procedures (generally tumor and adjacent normal) and blood as well as additional non-invasive specimens such as buccal swabs, stool, saliva, urine, etc. As of January 2026, over 77,200 patients at the James have consented to participate.
Plasma, serum, DNA, PBMCs, cryopreserved tissue, and additional non-invasive specimens are stored for future research at the College of American Pathologists (CAP) accredited BSSR Biorepository located at OSU's Polaris Innovation Centre. Clinical data to annotate specimens is pulled from the electronic medical record, Epic. Researchers may receive specimens and data with subject identifiers with prior IRB approval or de-identified and coded-limited data sets without additional IRB approvals or determinations.
TCC is the common protocol used by the Oncology Research Information Exchange Network (ORIEN), which was formed in 2014 through a partnership between the OSUCCC – James and Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, as a collaboration to accelerate cancer research discoveries that can translate to more effective clinical care. The network currently includes 17 cancer centers. A subset of cancer patients enrolled in Total Cancer Care are part of the ORIEN Avatar cohort which includes a clinical dataset, research grade next generation exome sequencing of tumor and normal tissue and RNAseq of the tumor as well as digital H&Es. Over 6,400 OSU Total Cancer Care patients are part of the Avatar cohort.
The OSU ORIEN Avatar Data cBioPortal platform is an easy point-and-click interaction with OSU Avatar clinical and genomic data developed by OSTOR (Ohio State Translational ‘Omics Resource).
OSUCCC members and other cancer researchers can request access to the OSU Avatar clinical and genomic data for TCC-enrolled patients at Ohio State who have undergone research-grade tumor sequencing (whole exome and RNA sequencing). This does not include OSU Avatar germline whole exome sequencing. Note: This dataset only includes the OSU data, not the entire ORIEN network.
To request access to the OSU Avatar Data cBioPortal platform, please go to: http://go.osu.edu/ostor-cbioportal
Data cannot be downloaded via OSTOR cBioPortal, but can be requested via the Total Cancer Care request form at http://go.osu.edu/osutcc. Users can download lists of sample IDs from cBioPortal using the ‘Download’ tab (under Query by Gene) or ‘Save/Share Virtual Study’ (under Explore Selected Study) and include those in the request.
General cBioPortal ‘how to’ resources & videos: https://docs.cbioportal.org/user-guide/overview/
For more information on TCC click here
Arm 2: Prospective Procurement (back to top)
Director, PPS: Scott Scrape, MD
Clinical Lab Manager: Marlene Parker, PA, ASCP
Clinical Lab Tech Lead: Kelly Hamilton, BS
Prospective Procurement Services provides fresh tissue from surgical procedures to investigators who require specimens that have not been previously banked. Specimens are processed according to protocol and available for laboratory staff to retrieve from the main medical center campus location. All human tissue samples taken for research at OSUWMC hospitals must be coordinated through Prospective Procurement.
Prospective Procurement Services
N343 Doan Hall
Phone: 614-366-1579
Marlene Parker, PA, ASCP
Clinical Lab Manager
Surgical Pathology and Prospective Procurement
CCCT D578
(614) 685-4829
Marlene.Parker@osumc.edu
For more information on TPS click here
Arm 3: Biorepository (back to top)
Biorepository Manager: Jason Bacher, BA
The Biorepository is accredited by the College of American Pathologists (CAP) and provides high-quality, centralized specimen processing and banking services to OSUCCC investigators and the TCC. Specimen processing techniques include, but are not limited to, serum and plasma, DNA extraction from peripheral blood, frozen tissue, saliva, buccal swabs, immortalized lymphoblast or fibroblast cell lines and histology services including cutting for spatial transcriptomics. Specimens are maintained in locked freezers in a secure building. The Biorepository is monitored by the Rees Scientific Environmental monitoring system to ensure proper environmental and storage conditions 24 hours a day. In the event of a power failure, the biorepository is connected to a diesel-powered generator that will keep the freezers operating until full power is restored.
The Biorepository operates according to national and international best-practices standards including those from the NCI Best Practices, the International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories (ISBER), the College of American Pathologists (CAP) Biorepository Accreditation Program.
For more information on the Biorepository click here
Please remember to cite the Shared Resources!
Research reported in this publication was supported by The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center and the National Institutes of Health under grant number P30 CA016058.
We thank the XX Shared Resource at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, Columbus, OH for (XX)