WU-SN-TMC Biospecimen Core

Biospecimen Core Summary/Abstract Senescence is a complex phenotype that likely consists of many states that have been implicated in human health and disease. We aim to create the Washington University Senescence Tissue Mapping Center (WU- SN-TMC), which will leverage our expansive infrastructure to generate multi-omics and imaging data to build

high resolution, multi-dimensional atlases of cellular senescence across tissue types and lifespan that can be used to enable basic and translational senescence research. Our WU-SN-TMC will develop cellular senescence atlases using 500 human samples for four essential tissue types: bone marrow, breast, colon,

and liver. To tackle such an ambitious goal, the WU-SN-TMC Biospecimen Core (WU-SN-TMC BC) has been designed to facilitate the collection of human tissues across a wide range of ages. In addition, the WU-SN- TMC BC will collect multiple tissues from individuals to allow us to compare senescent numbers and states

across tissues from a single individual. The WU-SN-TMC BC will accomplish this goal by using sample acquisition pipelines that are divided into four tissue prospective collection protocols (CPs) that leverage WU clinical expertise and patient volume to collect relevant biospecimens. These CPs include: 1) CP1, which will

collect bone marrow from normal donors without chronic disease across ages; 2) CP2, which includes normal breast, bone marrow and skin from patients undergoing cosmetic breast surgery across ages; 3) CP3, which includes patients undergoing endoscopy who will provide normal stomach, small bowel, and colon across

ages; and 4) CP4 includes patients undergoing laparoscopic upper gastrointestinal surgery that will provide normal bone marrow, liver, and skin, again across ages. While our focus is on senescence during human aging, some patients in CP2 and CP4 will have received prior chemotherapy for cancers in unrelated tissues

(i.e. biospecimens will be from unaffected, cancer-free tissues). This cohort will provide the opportunity to compare age-matched controls +/- chemotherapy and allow perturbations tested in mice in the Biological Analysis Core (BAC) to be mapped back to human tissue for relevance, further enriching the bone marrow,

breast, colon, and liver atlases we will produce. The existing infrastructure at WU, our patient volume and the expertise of our team will ensure the success of the WU-SN-TMC BC.