Cores

The goals of this Administrative Core are to provide leadership and oversight of this Ovarian Cancer SPORE grant, facilitate integration and collaboration of this Ovarian Cancer SPORE within the DF/HCC as well as with other SPORE grants and enable the success of the overall Ovarian Cancer SPORE and its individual components.   The administrative core will coordinate and evaluate each of the components of the Ovarian Cancer DF/HCC SPORE grant in addition to providing leadership and operational oversight of all of the scientific, administrative, and fiscal aspects of the SPORE grant. The Administrative Core will facilitate scientific interactions within the SPORE, both within as well as outside of DF/HCC and assuring that findings are shared from ongoing research within the SPORE Projects. The Core also will also provide for engaging our advocacy community both within DF/HCC as well as outside of Harvard and to in addition, leverage the SPORE resources, scientific findings, and collaborations to generate additional funding for ovarian cancer research both within DF/HCC and outside as well. The SPORE PIs/PDs will equally provide fiscal and resource oversight to the projects and cores assuring translational research and clinical trial success.  The administrative Core will ascertain that each project has adequate budgetary resources for success. 

The integrated Pathology Core brings together experts in ovarian cancer pathobiology with the SPORE Project Investigators, the Organoids, Model Systems, and Biomarkers Core, and the DRP and CEP. The effectiveness of the Pathology Core lies in the efficient use of both separate and shared resources. The Pathology Core will be in close proximity to the investigators who require their services for the DF/HCC SPORE in Ovarian Cancer projects at their respective institutions. A centralized working group of pathologists from the participating institutions is the best way to ensure that this research will be properly carried out for the following reasons: 1) Efficient distribution of consented tissues is paramount because collected samples could find their way into multiple studies. Careful coordination with pathology, the consenting teams, and all research teams will ensure that a single consented case can be allocated to multiple researchers at different institutions. 2) Studies will be conducted largely at the two major institutions Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Dana Farber Harvard Cancer Center (BWH/DFHCC) and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and it is likely that projects from multiple studies will be trying to access tissue from the same cases. The pathology core will coordinate tissue collection to ensure that the maximum amount of research can be done. 3) A central group of pathologists across all projects will allow for immediate and uniform tissue processing within each project and uniform interpretation of all data by a single group of trained experts.

The DF/HCC Ovarian Cancer SPORE Biostatistics Core will collaborate on all research activities within the SPORE, including SPORE Projects, Developmental Research and Career Development projects, and other SPORE Cores, assure the highest standards of scientific rigor in areas of study design, statistical modeling, statistical inference, and data integrity. The specific aims of the Biostatistical Core are:

Specific Aim 1: To collaborate on SPORE projects, Developmental and Career Enhancement Project, and other Cores for study design, conduct, monitoring, statistical analysis, and reporting of translational, clinical and associated correlative studies, laboratory, and animal studies.

Specific Aim 2: To collaborate with SPORE investigators on integrating laboratory analysis with endpoints from clinical studies and translational research through implementing data acquisition , data integrity, and date storage with statistical software.

Specific Aim 3: To collaborate on short-term projects with the entire group of SPORE researchers, including Project Leaders and Core Leaders.

Specific Aim 4: To collaborate on evaluation of Developmental Research and Career Enhancement Programs through judgment on biostatistical design and analyses during the development and review of these projects.

Specific Aim 5: To collaborate with SPORE investigators to identify experimental study design issues and biostatistical modeling arising in ovarian cancer research for which no standard methodologies are available and to encourage faculty associated with the SPORE and within the wider community of statisticians and bioinformaticists at DF/HCC to conduct research in developing new methods to address those problems.

The overall purpose of the Organoids, Model Systems, and Biomarkers Core is to procure relevant clinical samples and develop assays and organoid models that will support the investigation and development of strategies to overcome primary and acquired resistance.  Our first priority is to maintain and maximize access to consented tissues from women who are newly diagnosed with ovarian cancer or have residual or recurrent disease following chemotherapy. The second is to work with the investigators and the bank to ensure that project specific tumors that have been targeted and stored are successfully sequestered and retrieved on demand. The third is to ensure that the quality of the tissue is maximized and established by histologic review. Two tissue bank repositories are in place including the BWH/DFHCC (Drs. Liu, Matulonis and Crum) and MGH (Dr. Rueda) repositories. These repositories require multi-disciplinary co-operation in order to obtain, transport, and store tumor samples. Each institute has their own system set up for the retrieval and storage, but, the tissue bank staff from both institutions now meets on a monthly basis to maximize research and troubleshoot any processing or dispersal issues.