We at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), are embarking on a National Institutes of Health–funded study of why organ transplantrecipients are so susceptible to nonmelanoma skin cancers. Integral to our research is the establishment of a collection of specimens, a "Tissue Bank,"which will serve not only our own investigations but which we hope also will become a shared resource available to others.
Specifically, we need (1) blood samples for DNA extraction from organ transplant recipients with nonmelanoma skin cancers and (2) tumor samples(blocks) from this patient group. Our studies are approved by the UCSF Committee on Human Research, and local institutional review board approval should notbe necessary if the patients contact us directly.