Custom Collection Services

What is a Biorepository?

A biorepository is an organization that collects, processes, stores, and distributes tissue samples for clinical research or other scientific investigations. They assist in maintaining and managing specimens such as tissue samples from humans, animals and other living organisms. A biorepository functions to maintain biospecimens, collect relevant information and assure the quality of the samples in their collection. They follow standard operating procedures (SOPs) that reduce anomalies in samples and which also provide guidelines for storage and maintenance. SOPs also ensure that biospecimens collected closely resemble that of their natural state. It helps biorepositories maintain a standardized framework for conducting operations and allows for the seamless implementation of processes.

What is Custom Procurement?

Some biorepositories, like Geneticist Inc., provide custom tissue procurement. This means that they are able to provide custom collection of biofluids, tissue samples, and blood samples in various specialties such as gastroenterology, oncology, rheumatology, neurology, and dermatology. Biorepositories that offer custom collection services have the ability to collect from a vast range of medical procedures such as elective skin biopsies, resections, autopsies, endoscopies, blood draws, and more. Due to the nature of the collection processes and procedures, biorepositories need to have a skilled logistics team and an expert medical courier network. The custom procurement of biospecimens is important especially if:

• Fresh collections are required

• There is a necessity for matched tissue pairs

• Rare indications or specific specimens

• The need for specific procedures during the collection and processing of samples

• Active cases and autopsies are needed

• The study or research is complicated

Examples of Biospecimens

• Biofluids – Examples of biofluids include stool, urine, whole blood, serum, plasma, cerebrospinal fluid, saliva, sputum, and swabbed material. Biofluids can be available frozen or fresh. Depending on client preference, it can be with or without additives.

• Tissue – Some examples of human tissue include fresh tissue, fixed tissue, frozen tissue, formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) blocks, whole tissue samples, stained slides, unstained slides, tissue microarrays, and more. These samples can be annotated with the proper genetic and molecular characterizations, outcomes data, pathology reports, and patient characteristics.

• Cells – Some research may require frozen or fresh cells that are still viable. These cells can be isolated from peripheral blood, cord blood, and bone marrow of normal donors and those with disease. Some examples include myeloid cells, pluripotent stem cells, mononuclear cells, and lymphoid cells.

What to Look For?

There are several factors that help decide which biorepository to go with when custom collection services are needed. Some of the factors that can help decide are:

a)       Procurement format options

Since prospective collection enable clients to decide which elements fit their needs, a custom procurement format can be designed with the help of our experienced team of scientists. Depending on the need of clients, custom procurement of biofluids, fresh tissue, frozen tissue, and more are available. Clients can also set the exclusion and inclusion criteria for specimens and donors.

b)      Partnerships

It is important to look for a biorepository that has a vast network of clinical partners to help ensure the highest quality of required biospecimen collection. It would also increase the access to more human tissue samples in various formats.

c)       Team members

A biorepository with experienced and certified team members would be the best choice as they would be well-trained with the ability to better understand the needs of researchers and to help find better solutions if necessary. With a great team on hand, specimens are more likely to be of the highest quality and fulfill the requirements of clients.

d)      Quality assurance

It is important for the biorepository to perform quality control checks to ensure that specimens are of the highest quality. This means that the staff should understand the appropriate storage or procurement procedures and ensure that the SOPs are adhered to strictly.

e)      Consent and privacy

Biorepositories should follow the procedures and guidelines during the procurement of human tissue samples. Informed consent and privacy of the donors should be of the highest priority to protect their interests.

Why Geneticist?

For custom collection services, the staff at Geneticist can design custom collections of a wide variety of biospecimens. Our staff are certified, experienced, and highly trained. Geneticist is a biorepository that is compliant with the Institutional Review Board (IRB) standards and provides the highest quality of collections. All our biospecimens and material adheres to the official protocols and is approved by the IRB and Independent Ethical Committee (IEC). Geneticist operates in accordance with current Federal Regulations, Health Insurance Privacy and Portability Act (HIPAA) and International Conference on Harmonisation – Good Clinical Practice (ICH-GCP) guidelines. With the proper inventory management process and extensive procurement formats, Geneticist strives to fulfill client requirements and satisfaction.

Cancer Therapy

Thanks to extended research from human tissue samples we have been able to make major breakthroughs in cancer research. In the twenty-first century, evidence, both epidemiologically and clinically, have supported that the changes in whole-body metabolism can affect oncogenesis, the progression of tumors, and the response of tumor to therapy. It has been observed that metabolic conditions such as hyperglycemia, obesity, hyperlipidemia, and insulin resistance are associated higher with risk of cancer development, accelerated progression of tumors, and poor clinical outcome. Due to these findings, many clinical studies indicate that statins and metformin may help in decreasing cancer-related mortality and morbidity. Phenformin is another drug used to treat diabetics that can help with anticancer effects. However, phenformin was discontinued in the late 1970s due to a high incidence of lactic acidosis. Metformin is the most commonly used antihyperglycemic agent globally. It has an optimal pharmacokinetic profile with:

·         50 – 60% of absolute oral bioavailability

·         Slow absorption

·         Negligible binding to plasma protein

·         Broad tissue distribution

·         No hepatic metabolism

·         Limited drug interactions

·         Rapid urinary interaction

It also has an exceptional safety profile as there is a low number of individuals who have side effects. Statins also have a great safety profile and is currently used by a large population.

Cancer and Cellular Metabolism

The accumulation of evidence has suggested that malignant transformation is linked to changes that affect several factors of metabolism. Metabolic rearrangements associated with cancer have been linked with the inactivation of tumor suppressor genes and activation of proto-oncogenes. However, the accumulation of metabolites such as fumarate, succinate, and 2-hydroxyglutarate (2-HG) drives oncogenesis through the signal transduction cascades. Conclusively, these observations support the notion that signal transduction and intermediate metabolism are associated.

a)       Oncogenes and Metabolism

The signaling pathways from oncogenic drivers are linked to metabolic alterations due to cancer. For example, the expression of the PKM2 (an M2 isoform of pyruvate kinase) encourages the alteration of glycolytic intermediates in the direction of anabolic metabolism while regulating both transcriptional and post-transcriptional program that leads to the addiction of glutamine.

b)      Oncosuppressors and Metabolism

There are some oncosuppressor proteins that can regulate cellular metabolism. The inactivation of tumor suppressor p53 happens in more than 50% of all neoplasms causes a variety of metabolic consequences that could potentially stimulate the Warburg effect. P53 can possibly suppress the transcription of GLUT4 and GLUT1 and stimulate the expression of apoptosis regulator (TIGAR), TP53 induced glycolysis, SCO2, glutaminase 2 (GLS2) and many other pro-autophagic factors. It also interacts physically with glucose-6-phosphate-dehydrogenase (G6PD) with RB1-inducible coiled-coil 1 (RB1CC1).

c)       Oncometabolites and Oncoenzymes

It was found that metabolites can contribute to oncogenesis when mutations such as fumarate hydratase (FH) and succinate dehydrogenase (SDH) was linked to sporadic and familial types of cancer including pheochromocytoma, leiomyoma, renal cell carcinoma, and paraganglioma. once the enzymatic activity of SDH and FH is disrupted, succinate and fumarate accumulate resulting in oncogenesis.

Targeting Cancer Metabolism

The metabolic targets for cancer therapy rewiring of cancer cells is seen as a promising source for new drug targets. Some different approaches have resulted in the identification of agents that can help with targeting glucose metabolism for cancer therapy. However, the low number of metabolic inhibitors reflect the recent rediscovery of the field. There are also some concerns about the uniformity between malignant cells and non-transformed cells that are undergoing proliferation.

a)       Targeting Bioenergetic Metabolism

Some cancer-associated alterations such as the Krebs cycle, glycolysis, glutaminolysis, mitochondrial respiration, and fatty acid oxidation have been studied as potential sites for drug therapy.

b)      Targeting Anabolic Metabolism

The anabolic metabolism in cancer cells increases the output from nucleotide, protein, and protein biosynthesis pathways to help with the generation of new biomass in rapidly proliferating cells (includes both normal and malignant). A high metabolic flux through the pentose phosphate pathway is vital to cancer cells as it generates ribose-5-phosphate and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH).

c)       Targeting Other Metabolic Pathways

Other pathways involved in the adaptation to metabolic stress may provide drug targets for cancer therapy. This applies to autophagy, hypoxia-inducible factors 1, and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide metabolism. A competitor of nicotinamide phosphoribosyltransferase (NAMPT) known as FK866 has been observed to have antineoplastic effects in murine tumor models.

Conclusion

The extensive metabolic rewiring in malignant cells provides a large number of possible drug targets. Many agents that target metabolic enzymes are used for decades while others are being developed. Therefore, the use of metabolic modulators that could be complicated by the similarities of highly proliferating normal cells and metabolism of malignant cells, there might be a chance to harness the antineoplastic activity of these drugs clinically. While many efforts were focused on merging metabolic modulators and targeted anticancer drugs, there may be a common view that metabolism and signal transduction are mostly independent if not separate entities. More research is needed to study the extent of how the metabolic functions of oncosuppressive and oncogenic systems contribute to the biological activity.

References:

Galluzzi L, Kepp O, Vander Heiden MG, Kroemer G. Metabolic targets for cancer therapy. Nature Reviews Drug Discovery. 2013; 12: 829-846.