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Human Tissue and Organ Research Resource

Grant Number: U42OD011158

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The Human Tissue and Organ Research Resource (HTORR) provides high-quality human biospecimens to investigators to facilitate scientific advances in biomedical research across multiple disciplines. HTORR collaborates with a nationwide network of organ procurement organizations, tissue banks, eye banks, and surgical medical centers to recover and distribute a wide variety of human biospecimens from post-surgery and post-mortem donors. The National Disease Research Interchange (NDRI), a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization with a mission to advance biomedical research through the distribution of human organs, tissues, and cells to biomedical researchers, has managed HTORR for more than 30 years.

Services Provided

The services provided by HTORR are unique compared to most other human tissue resources and biobanks. HTORR predominately utilizes a prospective procurement model with project-specific recovery and preservation protocols to collect human biospecimens from a diverse pool of normal and diseased donors. The HTORR model provides the scientific expertise and technical support to tailor tissue collection procedures to the specific requirements defined by each investigator’s experimental design. This provides investigators with standardized collection procedures that yield more rigorous and reproducible results.

Interested investigators complete a simple application process and, once approved, are served when tissues matching their requests become available. HTORR can also provide a Letter of Support (LOS) and budgetary information for NIH grant applications. For information about how to set up a prospective tissue recovery or to request a LOS, please email the NDRI Scientific Services Department at [email protected].

Biospecimens provided by HTORR are utilized in more than 150 peer-review published scientific studies annually. To learn more about NDRI’s services and to browse these publications, please refer to NDRI’s website.

Benefits of HTORR

  • Rigor and reproducibility: Project-specific sample acquisition to support more consistent experimental accuracy and data analysis
  • Sample diversity: Biospecimens from all body systems with customizable processing and preservation methods (fresh, frozen, and fixed)
  • Rapid distribution: The potential for sample recovery and delivery to investigators within 24 hours
  • Continuous customer service: 24/7 response to service needs and shipment information
  • Trusted partner: More than 30 years of experience as an NIH-supported research resource providing human organs and tissues for research

Principal Investigator

Thomas Bell, M.S., Ph.D
1601 Cherry Street, Suite 1700
Philadelphia, PA 19103
Phone: 215-557-7361 x289
[email protected]