Dear Tissue-Biospecimen Banking and Technology Tools Knowledge Center community,

As of May 11, 2012 the Tissue-Biospecimen Banking and Technology Tools Knowledge Center, as with all caBIG® Knowledge Centers, will no longer be operated by dedicated Knowledge Center staff. The online resources associated with the Knowledge Center, such as forums and wikis, will remain operational; however, new content on them from this date will be 100% community-provided, rather than provided by individuals and groups that are funded by NCI to do so. The Knowledge Center sites are open and free for all to use, and we encourage your continued active participation, so that users may continue to ask, and obtain answers to, pertinent questions relating to these informatics capabilities. Furthermore, please note that the former Knowledge Center personnel are free to continue to post to the Knowledge Center online resources as community members; they are simply no longer paid to do so.

In addition to the peer support made possible by the online resources of the Knowledge Centers, triaged direct support remains available from NCI Application Support which, as always, can be contacted by e-mail at ncicb@pop.nci.nih.gov or by telephone at 301-451-4384 (toll free: 888-478-4423). Support is available Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. US Eastern Time, excluding government holidays.

NCI’s Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology (CBIIT) expects to continue the provision of informatics support currently provided by the Knowledge Centers, in a manner consistent with such feedback as we obtain from the NCAB ad hoc Informatics Oversight Committee, soon after the launch of the new National Cancer Informatics Program (NCIP). NCIP is not a renaming of the caBIG® program, but rather an opportunity to reevaluate and reshape how NCI supports the informatics needs of the cancer community. If you would like to voice concerns, questions or suggestions beyond immediate requests for support, please contact Anthony Kerlavage (anthony.kerlavage@nih.gov).