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| LifeSpan's Tissue Resources |
| LifeSpan has established extensive tissue resources in order to support its
contract research services and protein localization databases. These resources
include a massive internal collection of over 2 million tissue specimens,
normal and diseased tissue microarrays, and a network of commercial and
academic partners that can fulfill custom tissue requests. To ensure
availability of the most commonly requested tissues, LifeSpan has prioritized
its tissue procurement efforts on the most prominent Therapeutic Area Tissues,
such as CNS, metabolic disorders, and inflammatory disease. By combining these
resources with expertise in pathology, tissue quality control, and
immunohistochemistry, LifeSpan can provide full service localization profiling,
without requiring the client to source difficult to obtain reagents.
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[LifeSpan Tissues]
[LifeSpan TMAs]
[Supplied Tissues]
[Tissue Procurement]
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| LifeSpan's
In-House Tissue Bank |
| With more than 2 million formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded samples,
LifeSpan has one of the largest on-site collections of normal and diseased
human tissues in the industry. This resource provides LifeSpan with the range
of samples necessary to pinpoint gene expression specific to a given disease
and stage. LifeSpan's tissue bank is comprised of tissues from all major organ
systems, including samples representing more than 1,500 diagnostic categories.
Specimens are in the form of both formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded specimens as
well as fresh frozen. In addition to human tissues, LifeSpan has gathered a
comprehensive collection of normal primate specimens, as well as other
specimens from common animal models such as mouse, rat, and dog. |
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| Therapeutic Area Tissues |
| By focusing our efforts on maintaining an inventory of major therapeutic area
tissues, LifeSpan ensures its ability to quickly satisfy the needs of its drug
discovery clients. For each therapeutic area, the following lists of commonly
requested normal and diseased tissues have been defined. LifeSpan endeavors to
maintain an inventory of these tissues, or has established relationships
through which they can be obtained. These materials are available for inclusion
in contract research studies but are not representative of the entire LifeSpan
collection. Many other tissue types and diseases are also available from
LifeSpan's vast tissue repository.
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Normal Tissues
Single Specimens and TMAs
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Toxicology
Center
Single Specimens and TMAs
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Mouse, Rat, Dog, Cynomolgus
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Neurological
Disease Center
Normal Specimens
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All major brain regions
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Mapped hippocampus, hypothalamus, amygdala
Diseased Specimens
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Alzheimer's disease
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Parkinson's disease
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Multiple sclerosis
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ALS
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Glioblastoma, astrocytoma
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Infarct
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Inflammatory
Disease Center
Single specimens
Inflammatory Disease Screens
Differential Expression Panels
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Ulcerative Colitis Panel
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Crohn's Disease Panel
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Asthma Panel
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COPD Panel
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Allergic Rhinitis Panel
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BPH Panel
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Skin Disorder Panel
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Rheumatoid Arthritis Panel
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Lung Disease Panel
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Oncology
Disease Center
Single specimens and TMAs
representing 6 major cancer types
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Breast (IDC), Colon, Lung (NSC), Prostate, Pancreas, and Ovary
Focused Study Arrays and Panels
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Multi-cancer screening TMAs
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Single Cancer Prevalence TMAs (N=50)
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Differential Expression Screens
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Progression Panels
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Cardiovascular
Disease Center
Single Specimens
Screens and panels
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Atherosclerosis Screen 1 (Coronary artery disease)
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Atherosclerosis Differential Expression Panel
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Heart Failure Differential Expression Panel
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Human Cardiac Survey
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Canine Cardiac Survey
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Metabolic
Disease Center
Single Specimens and Panels for:
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Type II Diabetes Screen
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Obesity Screen
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Hypertension Screen
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Tissue
Cross-Reactivity Center
32+ Frozen Normal Tissue Types
(each from 3 non-related individuals)
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Cynomolgus Tissue Screen
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Human Tissue Screen
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| Tissue
Microarrays |
| Tissue microarrays (TMAs) are a cost-effective and convenient resource that
enables researchers to simultaneously study protein localization patterns in
large numbers of normal and diseased tissues. LifeSpan offers many high quality
TMAs for use in contract research studies. When using tissue microarrays, two
critical factors need to be considered: |
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Will the specimen's size be sufficient to answer the biological question?
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Are the elements of adequate quality for use in a study?
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| When designing a study, LifeSpan ensures that the tissues used will
be adequate to answer the biological question being asked. For example, cancer
TMAs would be insufficient when studying the angiogenesis associated with tumor
development. When arrays are used in a study they are rigorously tested to
ensure that each specimen was fixed appropriately, exhibits the defined
pathology, and is antigenic when tested in immunohistochemistry using control
antibodies. See a list of TMAs
available for use in LifeSpan contract services.
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When applicable, LifeSpan will prepare Custom Tissue MicroArrays using
client supplied materials in order to increase study efficiencies. Such custom
arrays are particularly useful when conducting regular screening of standard
samples, such as in-house animal models, xenografts, and cell line libraries.
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| Supplied
Tissues |
| LifeSpan often conducts contract research studies using tissue materials
supplied by the client or procured from other commercial resources. Studies are
often strengthened by the inclusion of over-expressing cell lines (when
available) as antibody characterization positive controls. Human tissues,
non-human tissues, and cell lines can be supplied in fixative for paraffin
embedding or as prepared paraffin blocks.
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| An increasing number of TMAs have become available commercially, however,
quality may vary from vendor to vendor. These reagents can be powerful tools
for localization profiling, but care must be taken during interpretation to
ensure accuracy of results. LifeSpan welcomes the use of such commercial tissue
resources in its contract research studies and offers its extensive molecular
pathology expertise to ensure that the quality of these materials is such that
we would be able to provide reliable immunohistological data.
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| Tissue
Procurement Services |
| In the event that specific tissue specimens are not immediately available from
LifeSpan's internal tissue bank, Lifespan has the ability to procure these
materials on a prospective basis. The relationships that LifeSpan has developed
with external resources allows for timely tissue procurement, often at a
preferred price. Tissue procurement is available only in conjunction with the
execution of contract research services.
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