Specimen Management

• Study Design Consulting
• Biospecimen Budgeting
• Document Control (Laboratory Manuals and Tracking Forms)
• Kit Building
• Specimen Distribution
• Specimen Storage

The Johns Hopkins All Children’s Pediatric Biorepository has capacity to store and environmentally monitor across the entire spectrum of storage conditions – ambient, refrigerated, frozen and ultra-cold – in both conventional or automated freezer locations. All storage equipment is physically secured, monitored 24/7 using third party and NIST certified data loggers and maintained under careful conditions to ensure biospecimen quality. The Biorepository maintains contingency response plans in case of individual equipment failure or widespread disaster. Loss of power or functionality is mitigated by the Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital auxiliary power and liquid nitrogen reserves.

• Specimen Processing

The biorepository offers dynamic processing services configurable to study requirements within recommended best practices.

• Tissue-Based Diagnosis and Research Core

We handle and process tissue specimens to meet a range of diagnostic and research needs.

The Tissue-Based Diagnosis and Research Core at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital offers a range of reference and research services, including routine and customized design, planning, handling, processing, and preparation of diagnostic grade Histopathology and Cytology derivatives. 

We collaborate with researchers from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds within our own institution and for outside referral services. We handle tissue specimens derived from basic research studies and clinical remnants from the Johns Hopkins All Children's Anatomic Pathology division. We operate with the highest standards of Research Operations for proper Institutional Review Board-approved handling, deidentification and allocation for research applications. We apply and develop processes according to well established diagnostic and precision medicine grade techniques.

Our services are available for all researchers within our health system and other academic institutions. The Tissue Core also has established a collaborative relationship with The Reference Histology Laboratory and The Oncology Tissue Services at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore for additional expertise and technology.

Our Services

We accept fresh, frozen, formalin fixed and formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) specimens from human or animal case material and research tissue specimens in support of diagnostic or research applications.

We offer instruction in diagnostic pathology methods for specimen procurement, optimization of fixation and specimen handling, and provide training in cryostat and paraffin specimen microtomy on the user’s own equipment or in the Shared Resources core.

Our services include:

• Human and animal tissue processing
• Frozen tissue and OCT embedded - Frozen sectioning
• Tissue and cell derivative preparation and aliquoting
• FFPE processing
• FFPE microtomy
• Routine H&E staining
• Special stains
• Immunohistochemistry
• Fluorescence in-situ hybridization
• Transmission electron microscopy processing and sectioning

TBDRC Requests

If you would like to request Tissue Core services (both internal and external clients), please download and fill out this form, and we will follow up with you to provide a quote for services and finalize your request. Once complete, please email the form to [email protected], and we will follow up with you to provide a quote for services and finalize your request.