PI: David Bowtell

Objective:     To create a biospecimen repository, comprising of blood and urine specimens, tumor blocks and fresh tissue samples, within the context of a national population-based case-control study of ovarian cancer.    Specimens will be collected, processed and stored for use in the projects within this program, and for future molecular and early detection studies of ovarian cancer. We aim to unify the management of and access to a number of archival Australian OVCA banks and to coordinate national collection and processing of prospective OVCA samples, and blood samples from controls.

Specific Aims:

•  Using a network or nurse-interviewers, we will prospectively collect blood and urine from cases (1000) and controls (1000), pathology blocks from all enrolled cases, and fresh tumors from the subset of enrolled cases (~600) who are seen in major clinical centers around Australia

•  Receive, store, log, process and disseminate biospecimens to researchers within the program from a central Biorepository located at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre

•  To establish a comprehensive database relating epidemiologic and clinical information to each sample and maintain the database to enable the scientific projects within this program, and as a resource for future investigation of factors relating to early detection, response to treatment and survival following ovarian cancer.