NTP Archives

Established in 1984, the National Toxicology Program (NTP) Archives is a state of the art facility, providing the primary public resource for toxicology research. The Archives houses an unmatched collection of research specimens and supporting data from over 2,000 NTP studies.

NTP carefully preserves its study collections, educational material, and training material on rodent pathology. Materials in the collection can be viewed or used by researchers in their work and may also be available to the public by request. Available materials include:

  • 7.5 million histological slides
  • 4.6 million paraffin embedded tissue blocks
  • 242,000 bags of formalin preserved tissues
  • 74,000 frozen specimens
  • Study data including:
    • 3.5 million pages of paper data
    • 10.6 million pages of data on microfiche
    • 1.5 million pages of digital or electronic records on CDs and DVDs
  • Histopathology images including:
    • Over 52,000 2x2 kodachrome slides
    • Over 18,000 digital images
  • Pathology and laboratory animal training materials and study sets
Pursuant to NIH policy, the National Toxicology Program Archives is listed in the Registry of NIH Scientific Collections.
 

Frozen Samples

Frozen samples are an important part of the Archives. A wide variety of research specimens and supporting tissue samples are archived. These include: normal tissue, nonneoplastic tissue specimens (view the Nonneoplastic Lesion Atlas (NNLA) for diagnostic guidelines), neoplastic (tumor) specimens, DNA & RNA, blood and blood fractions (serum, plasma, etc), bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) supernatant, as well as urine and sperm suspensions from treated and control rats and mice.

Histopathology Images

Facilities for photomicroscopy permit NTP to acquire high quality digital images of histopathologic lesions. These are scanned from glass slides using conventional optical photomicroscopy or high resolution, whole slide scanning equipment. These materials can be used for retrospective research to characterize and compare diverse diseases or disease processes.

Opportunities to Advance Science

Archival materials are a unique resource for research in toxicologic pathology. The Archives provides researchers and the public the rare opportunity to:

  • Characterize and compare diverse diseases or disease processes that occur spontaneously or are chemically induced
  • Examine collections of rare and unusual lesions
  • Explore observed pathologic responses at the cellular or molecular level to determine mechanisms of disease
  • Study chemically induced lesions in rodents as animal models of human disease

Request Information

NTP Archives maintain world class collections of educational and training materials on rodent pathology, available to anyone upon request (subject to an approval process). The Archives' knowledgeable staff are available to discuss with you archived materials of potential importance to your research.

Learn more about the archives in the NTP archives brochure.