PROJECT SUMMARY: CLINICAL CORE The objective of the C-SiG Clinical Core is to provide a user-friendly, one-stop service to access digestive disease-related biospecimens for Center members. Under the direction of Dr. Lisa Boardman, a well- established clinician scientist with IRB, application of constitutional and somatic molecular genetics and their impact of molecular pathways associated with disease and health, and biobanking expertise, the organization and infrastructure of the C-SiG Clinical Core provides essential expertise and personnel to advise and interact with C-SiG members in pursuit of two Specific Aims: First, to expedite access to GI biospecimens for C-SiG members from study design development to identification of appropriate clinically and molecularly annotated specimens. Second, to enhance existing individual GI-related biobanks operating within the Clinical Core umbrella and develop new repositories. To achieve these aims the C-SiG Clinical Core: i) Integrates existing tissue collections and annotated data into a collaborative web-based organizational structure that is easily accessible by C-SiG members; ii) Expedites institutional IRB protocol/biospecimens committee approval and coordinates priority access for C-SiG members to expert intramural biospecimens processing services; iii) Facilitates the initiation of new biobanks that will focus on new diseases or types of biospecimens not currently collected by existing biobanks with an emphasis on accruing diverse patient samples; iv) Develops best practices for biospecimen processing and procurement in anticipation of tissues that will be optimal for emerging technologies (e.g., cryopreservation for single cell isolation). The Core integrates existing resources from individual investigators in GIH and from institutional biospecimens repositories, providing a cost-effective approach to collaboratively translate GI signaling paradigms into human tissues. Additionally, the C-SiG Clinical Core has developed strong partnerships with the IRB, anatomic pathology (aka TRAG; source of all surgical biospecimens), the Pathology Research Core (tissue sectioning), the Center for Individualized Medicine (whole exome sequencing data through the Tapestry Study) and the Mayo Biobank (blood based biospecimens, FFPE tissues, and epidemiologic information). The primary services offered by the C-SiG Clinical Core are IRB protocol development support, biospecimens request support, and biobank support services. We support the collection of stool for human microbiome research and have developed an organoid- related service line. We are developing molecular phenotyping and we will enhance the Institutional initiative for digitalization of all clinical tissue slides by digitalization of C-SiG members research generated slides to create a digital atlas repository which will both inform sample selection for future C-SiG members’ use and provide the infrastructure for hypothesis generating and agnostic studie...