caBIG® Announces the Release of caTissue Suite 1.1
The cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid® (caBIG®) has recently released caTissue Suite 1.1, an open-source, web and programmatically accessible solution for managing biospecimens collected in support of basic and clinical research. The new release was developed to improve and speed biobanking activities in support of research.
"Now that caTissue v1.1 is available we have upgraded to it and have a number of other banks lined up to also start using the University of Pennsylvania instance of caTissue to support their banking efforts," says Terry McSherry, IT Project Lead, Biomedical Informatics Consortium and Project Manager for the caTissue Adoption at the University of Pennsylvania. "We are excited to bring more banks on board to use caTissue because Suite v1.1 is more than just a specimen inventory system; it includes annotation and query capabilities that will greatly assist banks in both capturing and easily retrieving the information that is important to their research."
caTissue helps users manage inventory, annotation and sample tracking, and the derivation and aliquotting of samples for follow-up analysis. The tool also supports clinical and pathology report annotation and provides query capabilities for researchers to identify and find samples for their own research projects, and features "Dynamic Extensions," allowing biobanks to develop and share annotations customized for their institution.
New capabilities provided by the enhanced version of caTissue include:
- The ability to support multiple repositories across an institution using a single installation of caTissue while supporting appropriate data security and patient privacy
- Advanced query capabilities including:
- Time between events, patient age and other key annotations
- Compatibility with caGrid, allowing users to share and access data locally or across the caBIG® network
- Enhanced clinical annotation capabilities including the ability to create customized forms
- Performance improvements including improved user interface and workflow.
caTissue Suite is built on a common set of Open Source technologies for ease of installation and maintenance and is interoperable with other caBIG® tools and technologies. A Java-based Application Programming Interface (API) and a caGrid compatible Grid Service are provided for programmatic access to data. More information about caTissue, including user and technical documentation is available from https://cabig.nci.nih.gov/tools/catissuesuite.
Read how effective biobanking can accelerate research:
http://cabig.cancer.gov/resources/newsletter/issueIII/people.asp
Learn more about how caTissue streamlines biobanking management:
http://cabig.cancer.gov/resources/newsletter/issueIII/milestones.asp
Visit the Tissue Banking and Pathology Tools Knowledge Center for resources and information about implementing caTissue:
https://cabig-kc.nci.nih.gov/Biospecimen/KC/index.php/Main_Page
