KPMP Quality Control paper published in Physiological Genomics
KPMP investigators recently published the collaborative paper " A Multimodal and Integrated Approach to Interrogate Human Kidney Biopsies with Rigor and Reproducibility: Guidelines from the Kidney Precision Medicine Project" in Physiological Genomics.
Co-lead author, and co-chair of the KPMP Pathology & Molecular Integration Committee Tarek Ashkar (Indiana University) notes "The Kidney Precision Medicine Project (KPMP) is an endeavor to generate 3-dimensional (3D) molecular atlases of healthy and diseased kidney biopsies using multiple state-of-the-art OMICS and imaging technologies across several institutions. Obtaining rigorous and reproducible results from disparate methods and at different sites to interrogate biomolecules at a single cell level or in 3D space is a significant challenge that can be a futile exercise if not well controlled. We desperately need best practices and guidelines as large amounts of data are being collected from tissues using different technologies and from multiple institutions to make a well informed healthy and disease atlas."
Co-lead author and chair of the KPMP Tissue Interrogation Site Approval Committee(TISAC) Sanjay Jain(Washington University St. Louis) commented that "The described KPMP quality control pipeline realizes the power of combined analyses of well-vetted and curated data from different technologies. It ensures rigor, reproducibility and complementarity to generate molecular atlases of healthy and disease kidneys that can impact patient care, while extracting maximum data from a limited amount of tissue. The framework established serves as a paradigm for similar atlas efforts and precision medicine projects of other organs systems and diseases and a guide to investigators to generate high quality and reproducible data from limited tissue."
The breadth and depth of expertise needed for build a “Follow the tissue” pipeline required a coordinated building brick by brick effort. As described in the paper it required building an infrastructure in concept and action by an interdisciplinary team. One of the challenges was to have consortium members from different institutions come together and speak the same language and focus on the larger goal of creating a process that produces trackable high quality data ultimately beneficial to the patient. The various team members including patients, recruitment site study coordinators, repository staff, technicians, data and software teams, trainees, junior investigators, administrative staff, bioinformaticians, clinicians, pathologist and the PIs stood up to the challenge and shouldered responsibilities and delivered. Sanjay Jain adds that he has never seen an effort like this lift off the ground in such a short time despite limited resources.