Assessment and Monitoring of Biospecimen Quality in an Academic Biorepository
Authors: Koch Matthew , Winstead Karen , Sagin Farah , McKillip Kelsey Dillehay 
Published: June 2021

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) recognizes that the lack of standardized, high‐quality biospecimen is a significant roadblock to cancer research. Biorepositories help overcome this roadblock by providing human biological samples in support of basic, translational, and clinical research. As custodians of these invaluable samples, biorepositories are responsible for assuring the quality and consistency of the biospecimen collected, stored, and dispensed for research purposes. The University of Cincinnati Biorepository (UCB) was established in 2010 with the goal of creating a centralized institutional biospecimen resource that provides investigators with a streamlined process for accessing high‐quality human biospecimens.

The objective of this study was to develop and implement a procedure for assessing and monitoring the quality of biospecimens collected and stored in the UCB, specifically human tissue samples. Pre‐analytical factors such as cold ischemia, tissue processing procedures, and storage temperature and duration are known to affect tissue quality. Provided that low‐quality tissue can have negative impacts on research, it is imperative that we routinely assess the quality of tissue samples collected for research purposes. This is especially true of tissue samples that predate the establishment of the UCB, for which there is little information available regarding the conditions under which these tissues were collected and stored. Furthermore, tissue quality data is also an important tool for validation of standard operating procedures for collection, processing, and storage of tissue samples.

Due to the relative instability of RNA and its propensity for degradation, the quality of a tissue sample can be determined by assessing its RNA integrity. Therefore, the UCB implemented a quality assurance program in which approximately 10% of banked biospecimens are randomly assessed for RNA quality on a quarterly basis. Tissue quality was assessed using frozen tissue samples embedded in optimum cutting temperature (OCT) compound. Frozen tissue blocks were sectioned at 10 μm to create tissue scrolls (average of 5 sections per scroll). Total RNA was extracted from the tissue scrolls using the Qiagen RNeasy Micro kit following the manufacturer's recommended protocol. RNA quality was determined using High Sensitivity RNA ScreenTapes on the Agilent 2200 TapeStation. The RNA Integrity Number (RIN) is representative of the quality of RNA and measured on a scaled of 1 to 10, where 1 represents completely degraded RNA and 10 indicates totally intact RNA. Generally, RNA with a RIN ≥7 is considered high‐quality and suitable for most downstream applications.

Data collected as part of our quality assurance program demonstrates that on average, cold ischemia up to 2 hours does not negatively affect tissue quality and that tissue samples are generally stable when stored at −80° over several years. In conclusion, the assessment of RNA quality is a useful tool for monitoring the quality of tissue samples collected and stored in a biorepository.

Support or Funding Information

Support for this project was provided by the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine.

This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.