In mid-1999, the Human Endometrial Tissue and DNA Bank was established at the Stanford University SCCPRR Center with the objective of acquiring, after written informed consent under an approved protocol, human endometrial tissue and DNA from well-characterized clinical subjects. The Bank moved to the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) in October of 2005, when the Director and the Bank Coordinator moved to UCSF. The goal was and has been for these well-characterized tissues to be available for use by participants in the NIH U-54 Specialized Cooperative Centers Program in Reproductive Research (SCCPRR), now the Specialized Cooperative Centers Program in Reproduction and Infertility Research (SCCPRIR). The specific aims of the UCSF SCCPRIR Human Endometrial Tissue and DNA Bank have been and continue to be: (1) to identify and recruit human subjects to donate endometrium and DNA and to acquire, characterize, store and distribute these specimens to SCCPRR participants for safe use in in vitro experiments;(2) to characterize endometrial tissue so that users have a complete dataset with regard to specimen histology, menstrual cycle stage, subject history of pregnancy and gynecologic disorders;and medical and pharmacologic history (e.g., fertility drug therapy);(3) to maintain a secure, accurate, and complete database on human endometrial tissue and DNA specimens for accurate interpretation of results. This national resource has served as a resource for tissues for other SCCPRR projects and for the cooperative research initiatives among UCSF, Stanford University, Vanderbilt, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and The University of South Carolina at Greenville. As of July 2006, 2209 tissue samples from 415 subjects have been collected, processed, stored and/or distributed. The Bank has been cited by publications in which authors have used the Bank's specimens.
NIH ExPorter
NIH ExPorter