The BioBank, a division of the Center for Applied Science and Technology at MHIR and located at Maine Medical Center, provides human biospecimens with annotated clinical data to the research community. The goal is to aid in the characterization of disease, improv
e patient therapies, and advance science and personalized medicine.
Excess surgical tissue and other biospecimens that would otherwise be discarded are de-identified, processed, stored, and distributed to research scientists at MMC, MHIR, other academic institutes, pharmaceutical and biotech companies, and commercial specimen repositories.
The BioBank is partnered with Tufts Medical Center’s Biorepository, more information about which can be found on the Tufts website.
Biospecimen Request Form
Investigators may submit a request for samples by completing the form above.
Contact the BioBank at: BioBank@MaineHealth.org, for more information.
BioBank Overview Videos
This video was created in collaboration with Dr. Li’s Organizational Behavior class at The University of Southern Maine’s School of Business, April 2021. The student that helped produce this was Chivorn (Donney) Blackett.
More than 100,000 samples with annotated data collected primarily from cancer and inflammatory disease surgeries, are available to investigators in fresh, frozen, or FFPE (formalin fixed-paraffin embedded) sample formats.
Tissue Specimen Collection and Histopathology
- human tissue bank of normal and diseased specimens
- tissue processing, sectioning, and routine histology stains
- panel of standard immunostaining protocols
- tissue microarrays
Tissue microarrays, constructed by the MHIR Histopathology Core are also available upon request. Sample inventory and tracking is managed by Progeny software.
The MMC BioBank (BB) operates under an Institutional Review Board (IRB) approved protocol and is overseen by the MH Office of Research Ethics & Compliance.
The MMC BB is accredited by the College of American Pathologists (CAP) and its operations are guided by NCI Best Practices for Biorepositories and by the International Society of Biological and Environmental Repositories (IBSER).
The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA)
The TCGA has compiled a database of genomic alterations associated with at least 20 different types of cancer. The MMC BioBank has provided tissue from prostate and sarcoma tumors with annotated clinical data to support the TCGA program.
Jackson Laboratory: Patient Derived Xenograft (PDX) Project
Over 300 patient-derived xenograft (PDX) tumors are available for engrafting into immunocompromised NSG™ mice for shipment to your facility or use in JAX-directed preclinical efficacy studies.
Lung Stem Cell Study: Cloning and Characterization of Adult Lung Stem Cells for Understanding Airway Diseases
Ovarian and Follicular Cancer Study: Cloning and Characterization of Adult Ovarian and Fallopian Tube Stem Cells for Understanding the Etiology of Ovarian Cancer
Esophageal Stem Cell Study: Cloning and Characterization of Barrett’s Esophagus Stem Cells for Risk Assessment and Targeted Therapy Development.
The Maine Triple Negative Breast Cancer Study: Cloning and Characterization of stem cells from the tumors of triple negative (ER, PR and HER-2/neu) breast cancer patients for development of improved therapies
