Continuation and Expansion of the National Mesothelioma Virtual Bank for Translational Research (U24) - 2021

Summary:
The National Mesothelioma Virtual Bank (NMVB) network consents patients to provide biospecimens (blood
products and tissue) together with demographic data, occupational history and clinical data (stage, treatment
and survival information) to the mesothelioma research community. In addition, protein biomarkers, genomic
and imaging data are also collected by researchers and shared for future studies. The University of Pittsburgh is
the coordinating site for the NMVB protocol, which is also in place at four partnering sites, New York
University, Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Maryland and University of
Pennsylvania. Our specific aims are to: 1) Continue to serve the mesothelioma cancer research community by
collecting and distributing tissue, blood and the aforementioned data as well as increasing the NMVB cohort to
2200 patients. We will continue to document and continually evaluate the usefulness of the NMVB to the
scientific community and measure its impact in collaboration with the Mesothelioma Applied Research
Foundation; 2) Expand the network to the Baylor College of Medicine which increases both the geographic and
racial diversity of the NMVB cohort. We will also promote our mesothelioma data model nationally and
internationally to encourage linkage to other registries; and 3) Our continued innovation aim is to automate
annotation of biospecimens through extraction of clinical, outcomes, and pathology data from electronic health
records and cancer registry systems through a cost-effective open source tool for Research Electronic Data
Capture or REDCap. We will deploy and implement scalable, cost-effective tools to maximize the effectiveness
of the data extraction process across collaborating sites which will allow linkage to other national and
international tissue and data sharing networks.

Grant Number: 5U24OH009077-19
NIH Institute/Center: ALLCDC
Principal Investigator: MICHAEL BECICH