Biospecimen procurement, processing & banking

• Human tissue procurement from clinical specimens and preservation
  • Surgical resection specimens (targeted collection of remnant material)
  • Autopsy specimens (targeted collection of remnant material)
  • Study-specific collection of non-remnant material (consented)
• Banked specimens for future research (>30,000 specimens available)
• Biofluid sample processing
  • Clinical trial support (processing, logistics, shipping)
  • Processing for other investigator-initiated studies
  • Pickup from UVA Health System Hospital and clinics
  • For information on phlebotomy services click here
• Enzymatic dissociation & viable freezing of tissue samples
• Peripheral blood leukocyte (PBL) Ficoll isolation & viable freezing
• Extraction of nucleic acids and protein from tissue samples  including microcapillary electrophoresis and RNA amplification & labeling

Histology-based research techniques

For basic histology services (processing/embedding/sectioning) involving animal tissues, please use the Research Histology Core Facility. The BTRF does accept animal tissues for IHC, CISH, laser microdissection, and other advanced applications.

• Paraffin embedding of human tissue specimens
• Histologic sectioning of fixed human tissue specimens
• Cryostat sectioning of frozen human tissue specimens
  • Training on instrument
  • Equipment usage
• Cytospin preparation of fluids containing cells
• Histology-guided macrodissection to enrich for specific cell types
• Laser microdissection
  • Training on instrument
  • Equipment usage
• Immunohistochemistry (IHC)
• • Performed on human and animal tissues
  • Panel of “standard” antibodies (for more information click here)
  • Custom immunohistochemistry (Investigator-supplied antibody)
• chromogenic RNA in situ hybridization (CISH)
• Custom tissue microarray manufacture
• Tissue microarray of the most common human carcinomas (159 cases)