The Thoracic Biorepository at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center catalogs nearly 150,000 specimens of various types (e.g., resection tissue, biopsy tissue, sputum, pleural fluid, bronchial brushes, plasma, serum, etc.) collected over 25+ years within VICC’s thoracic oncology program, along with clinical, pathological, and imaging annotation data relevant to each specimen. Funded by multiple National Cancer Institute consortia, the biorepository had distributed more than 14,000 samples as of 2021.
When the database underlying this system ceased to effectively support the collection, we undertook a major effort to clean, reshape, and migrate the data to a more stable platform. This data migration process required our team to become intimately familiar with the existing data and data structure, which was accomplished through studying the dataset as well as conferencing for hours with biorepository stakeholders.
Biostatistics faculty and staff who have contributed to biorepository operations and publications supported by it include:
- Heidi Chen
- Sheau-Chiann Chen
- Ming Li
- Yu Shyr
Publications include:
- Establishing a cohort and a biorepository to identify biomarkers for early detection of lung cancer: The Nashville Lung Cancer Screening Trial Cohort (Annals of the American Thoracic Society, 2021)
- Identification of proteomic features to distinguish benign pulmonary nodules from lung adenocarcinoma (Journal of Proteomic Research, 2017)
- The airway epithelium undergoes metabolic reprogramming in individuals at high risk for lung cancer (JCI Insight, 2016)
Press:
- The impact of the lung EDRN-CVC on Phase 1, 2, & 3 biomarker validation studies (Cancer Biomarkers, 2022)