SEER 2015-07: Assessing the Capacity of the Kentucky Cancer Registry to Serve as a Virtual Tissue Repository

Over the past decade, the technology and ability to do genome sequencing on formalin fixed paraffin imbedded tissue has evolved. In addition, the ability to use immunohistochemical staining techniques to identify both the presence and activity levels of many proteins have been improved. Because of these advances it is possible to think about the population-based NCI/SEER cancer registries not just as a research resource for high quality data, but also as a virtual population-based tissue repository. In other words, because the central cancer registry knows where the tissue blocks for each cancer patient are stored, it is possible for the central cancer registry to serve as an “honest broker” for the studies using the registry as a virtual tissue repository. The overall goal of this project is to evaluate the processes and procedures associated with using the registry as a virtual cancer tissue repository.