UCCRC Core Facilities: Human Tissue Resource Center

Scientific Director: Mark Lingen, DDS, PhD
Technical Director: Leslie Martin

Phone:  773-834-8419

Website: http://pathcore.bsd.uchicago.edu

The Human Tissue Resource Center (HTRC) provides investigators a centralized infrastructure to optimize the efficiency and costs related to research involving human biospecimens. The HTRC is comprised of three integrated components:  Biospecimen Bank (BSB), Laser Capture Microdissection (LCM), and Pathology Image Analysis (PIA). Currently, the HTRC provides services for the collection of clinically-annotated human tissues and provides collaborative support and services for procuring, processing, dispersing, and assessing all types of biospecimens.

Services

Biospecimen Bank:

  • Centralized tissue banking for organ, saliva, urine, blood, plasma, serum, and other tissue derivatives;
  • Pathological verification and analysis of tissue samples;
  • Tissue Microarray (TMA) subcore: consultation and technical support in the construction and analyses of custom TMAs; and
  • Histological services including routine tissue formalin fixation, processing, paraffin embedding, microtomy, H&E staining, and immunostaining.

Laser Capture Microdissection:

  • Identification, localization, and microdissection of targeted cell populations (from human and animal tissue sources); and
  • Extraction of DNA and/or RNA from dissected tissues.

Pathology Image Analysis:

  • Quantitative image analysis of immunohistochemistry on conventional and TMA sections, including tissue scoring, rare event detection, microvascular density counting, ploidy analysis, integrated optical density analysis, and tissue microarray scoring.