Human Tissues Biobank Core

Project Summary/Abstract: Human Tissues Biobank Core
Lack of access to validated, high quality human cells and tissues from well-characterized patients is one of the
greatest barriers to carrying out human skin disease research. The Human Tissues Biobank Core addresses
this unmet critical need, bringing together a set of unique and powerful resources that will allow skin disease
investigators at any geographic location, affiliated with any academic institution, to gain access to highly
validated, high quality human tissues with the goal of enabling and supporting high-quality translational human
skin disease research. The Biobank Core allows access to clinical information, DNA, serum, plasma, and
genotyping results from over 113,000 well characterized patients, their medical records, their genotyping
results and the ability to call these patients back for further studies. Access is also provided to over 1.5 million
banked pathologic specimens with the ability to access medical records with proper IRB approval. Living
patients and pathologic specimens are both searchable by diagnosis and skin diseases are well represented.
The Core also offers access to freshly excised healthy human adult skin and neonatal foreskin and to viable
populations of purified cells obtained from human skin. Lastly, the core offers immunodeficient NSG mice
grafted with human skin and blood. These mice allow study of living human skin in an accessible animal model
and are useful for studying topical drug delivery, signaling in living human skin, T cell trafficking to skin,
resident memory T cell generation, graft-versus-host disease and skin fibrosis. The Core also provides IRB
protocol drafting and support as well as all services necessary for external investigators to utilize these
resources. The Research Community potentially consists of any investigator at any institution who wishes to
carry out human cell and tissue-based research. We provide scientific projects from 40 investigators who wish
to utilize the services of this Core. In summary, the Biobank Core provides access to highly characterized living
patients, banked pathologic specimens, fresh human skin and immunodeficient mice engrafted with human
skin and blood. The goal of the Biobank Core is to provide access to high quality human tissues to any
researcher at any institution with the goal of accelerating human skin disease research.

Grant Number: 5P30AR069625-10
NIH Institute/Center: NIH
Principal Investigator: JON ASTER