The specific aims of the Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Core of the Prostate Cancer SPORE are:

• To maintain and enhance the clinical and tissue databases of the SPORE,
• To provide experimental design, epidemiological and biostatistical expertise to all of the SPORE projects
• To conduct data analysis
• To provide infrastructure and expertise for inter-SPORE and other scientific collaborations.

The Biostatistics/Bioinformatics Core consists of PhD and MS level biostatisticians, PhD and MS level bioinformaticists. The expertise of key members of this core facilitates planning, development and analysis of SPORE clinical trials, biomarker studies, molecular diagnostics and high throughput technologies such as DNA/RNA microarray, tissue microarray, proteomics experiments and retrospective studies. The Core has developed a fully operational, web-based Biorepository for the SPORE that houses the clinical and pathology data of consented prostate cancer patients seen at Northwestern Memorial Hospital (NMH), Jesse Brown Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VA), and Evanston Northwestern Healthcare (ENH) sites. Procedures are in place whereby a standardized set of data are collected, checked, edited and entered from the various components of the SPORE. The Core provides support for investigators, as they address the specific aims of their projects, through databases, informatics and computational models of biological systems. The Core also provides expertise in study design, research methods, data quantification, statistical methods and statistical computing. By providing joined and where appropriate, de-identified views of medical record, tissue sample pathology annotation and laboratory data, the Core provides the necessary support for the translational analyses linking data on tumor and disease markers, with clinical determinants of outcome such as tumor response, recurrence/progression-free survival and overall survival.

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