AIM at Melanoma Opens First Melanoma Tissue Bank in the U.S

Source: Cision, May 2019

SAN RAFAEL, Calif., April 5, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — AIM at Melanoma announces the grand opening of the first branch of the International Melanoma Tissue Bank Consortium (IMTBC) at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), Hillman Cancer Center.  The Pittsburgh site is one of six global locations of the consortium. These six institutions and their researchers will collect a critical mass of fresh frozen primary tumor tissue for collaborative research, with a goal of 500 samples collected in the next two years.  A fresh-frozen primary tissue bank—fully annotated and collaborative—has never been achieved before in melanoma, and it has taken more than a decade of dedicated work to accomplish.  The IMTBC is a global first because of the following combination of factors

• It’s a consortium—the six institutions are sharing data and tissue samples with each other