Breast Cancer

The Administration, Advocacy, Planning, and Communication Core (Admin Core) coordinates and integrates all components of the HCC SPORE in Breast Cancer, providing scientific, administrative, and fiscal oversight. Key functions include: 

• Aim 1: Administrative Management
  This aim provides fiscal and administrative oversight for the HCC SPORE in Breast Cancer, facilitates interactions with the HCC Breast Cancer Program and the larger HCC community, and ensures compliance with NIH policies
• Aim 2: Clinical Research Management
  The Core will support the conduct of clinical trials by promoting collaboration with the HCC Breast Cancer Program and enabling access to patients, clinical data, and biospecimens for translational research
• Aim 3: Integration of the SPORE within HCC
  This aim focuses on coordinating shared resources, promoting communication, supporting clinical trial development and access to biospecimens, and disseminating research advances beyond HCC to foster collaboration
• Aim 4: Patient Advocacy
  The Core will integrate patient advocates into SPORE activities, expand the role of advocacy, and provide mentorship and training for the next generation of patient advocates
• Aim 5: Planning and Evaluation
  This aim evaluates the progress of SPORE components, brings in new research directions, retires nonproductive efforts, leverages findings to secure additional funding.

The Biospecimen and Pathology Core (BPC) supports breast cancer research in Harvard Cancer Consortium (HCC) SPORE in Breast by collecting, processing, storing, distributing and analyzing biological samples, such as blood and tissue, from patients who have taken part in research studies. 

The BPC works with four major hospitals and additional research sites to carefully track every sample from the moment it’s collected to when it’s used in a study. The team partners with clinical trial leaders and research committees, such as the HCC Breast Clinical Data and Biospecimens Users Committee, to make sure the studies done using the collected samples are novel, scientifically sound and practical.

The BPC provides many laboratory services, including histology, dissection, immunohistochemistry, FISH, DNA/RNA extraction, library prep, tissue microarrays, digital scanning, flow cytometry, and extraction of circulating free DNA. The BPC helps create models that mimic patient tumors in the lab (like organoids and PDX models). It also has a specialized team, the Immuno-Oncology Sub Core, that focuses on understanding the immune system’s role in cancer.  

Clinical and specimen data are housed in the Breast Oncology Data Warehouse and the team includes pathologists, data scientists, lab techs, and research staff, supporting over 35,000 consented patients to date.

The Harvard Cancer Consortium Specialized Program of Research Excellence in Breast Cancer (HCC SPORE in Breast Cancer) Biostatistics and Computational Biology Core (Core B) supports all SPORE activities, including research projects and other cores. It ensures studies are scientifically sound by helping with study design, data management, and data analysis. Since the SPORE’s goal is to turn lab discoveries into clinical advances, Core B plays a key role in supporting this work.

Core B is made up of experienced biostatisticians and provides access to powerful computing tools, including commercial, public, and custom-built software. It also brings together expertise in computational biology and bioinformatics from both SPORE Projects and HCC, encouraging smooth collaboration and data sharing. This shared resource model helps provide high-quality, cost-effective support for research.

Having biostatistics and computational biology expertise organized as a shared core is an efficient way to make sure SPORE investigators have the support they need. The projects have interrelated analytic goals and needs and a Biostatistics and Computational Biology Core as a shared resource is an effective strategy to guarantee a high degree of integration among projects.