Christopher Moskaluk, MD, PhD
Christopher A. Moskaluk, MD, PhD, the Walter Reed Chair of Pathology, was awarded a $3.2 million UM1 grant from the National Cancer Institute to fund the Mid-Atlantic Division of the Cooperative Human Tissue Network (CHTN).
The CHTN has been in existence since 1987 and is a consortium of academic medical centers that procures biospecimens (tissue, blood, etc.) from patient donors with a focus on cancer. The CHTN has provided over 1.4 million samples to biomedical researchers across the country since its inception. One measure of its impact is the fact that between 2017 and 2021, the CHTN had contributed specimens to studies that supported 341 publications in the scientific literature.
UVA became a member of the CHTN through a competitive grant process in 2001, specifically for our expertise in creating tissue microarrays (TMAs). Typically only a single tissue specimen can be placed on a glass slide in a histologic preparation for scientists to perform analytic techniques. Tissue microarray technology allows up to several hundred small tissue samples to be placed on a single glass slide, greatly increasing the efficiency of population-based studies and greatly decreasing the analytic costs of the experiments.
Dr. Moskaluk has successfully re-competed through several grant funding cycles to remain in the CHTN. UVA continues to this day to be the major provider of TMAs to the CHTN, supporting research in the major types of cancer and providing surveys of normal tissue types.
Learn more at Mid-Atlantic Division of the Cooperative Human Tissue Network.
Filed Under: Research