Primary Airway Cell Biobank (PACB), Canada

Certification Status: Certification Form

Registration Status: Completed

Objective: First of its kind in Canada, the PACB is a non-for-profit facility providing researchers worldwide with standardized, high-quality primary airway cells from both normal donors and a large variety of airway diseased donors. Highly differentiated primary epithelial cells are essential for studies of airway physiology/pathophysiology, cell biology, inflammation, mucosal immunity, and for translational research to develop new therapeutics. While cell lines are not representative of genetic variation and fail to differentiate into the various cell types found in vivo such as ciliated and goblet cells. Therefore, primary cells are considered as â€œthe gold standardâ€ when testing hypotheses regarding disease pathogenesis and preclinical development of new therapeutics. The reduced accessibility to primary human bronchial epithelial cells (HBE) in terms of high cost and low variability discourages investigators, which has a negative impact on the progress of basic research and drug development, while there is a critical need for drugs for CF patients in particular. The cells distributed by PACB, isolated from a large variety of donors with different genetic backgrounds, are essential for improving our understanding of CF and other respiratory diseases and for translational research to develop new therapeutic agents.

Registered Biobank Name	Primary Airway Cell Biobank (PACB)
Biobank Leader	Dr. Annick Guyot
Country	Canada
Email for biobank inquiries	annick.guyot@mcgill.ca
Principal Investigator	Dr John W. Hanrahan
Website	http://www.mcgill.ca/cftrc/platforms/primary-airway-cell-biobank-pacb
User Type Mono: A biobank that supports a specific research project, may have few staff members, a small-scale accrual scope with little to no initial intention of releasing or distributing biospecimens to secondary parties Oligo: A biobank that supports several research groups or clinical trials, may or may not be designed to release biospecimens outside their collaborative group Poly: A biobank that has generally a larger accrual scope, resources, and multiple users outside the biobank proper	Poly - Collection aimed at supporting undetermined, multiple users with ethics approved research projects, through a defined access/application mechanism.

Biospecimen Collected:

Cohort Highlights

100 cases Next Generation Sequencing assay to detect all classes of genetic variant in Lung Cancer using a single Diagnostic test.
200 cases Colorectal TMA for QC purposes in support of study of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes in ovarian cancer tissues.
Build 300 cases breast cancer TMA containing primary tumour and matched metastatic LN for various subtypes (luminal, HER2, Triple negative). Start with Triple negatives.
125 cases Breast tumour and metastatic lymph nodes in breast cancer cases with outcomes of metastasis to lung or bone.
100 cases of rare tumours - fibrolamellar hepatocellular carcinoma. FFPE, frozen, BC.
200 cases of FFPE tissue sections from breast, lung adenocarcinoma, and lung squamous cell carcinoma with matching normal tissue (only pathology data requested).