Precision oncology is predicated on information derived from high-quality tissue samples. Despite almost half of all patients with cancer receiving radiotherapy, samples from these patients are much less commonly available for use in biomarker studies. Biobanks that include material from radiotherapy studies do exist; the challenge is increasing their visibility and accessibility to researchers to continue our efforts to improve outcomes for our patients.
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank N. Curtin for initiating and contributing to this work, T. Ward (patient representative) and G. Higginbotham for their input, and the National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) Clinical and Translational Radiotherapy Research Working Group (CTRad) and Cellular Molecular Pathology Initiative (CMPath) for making this work possible.
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Confederation of Cancer Biobanks: https://cmpath.ncri.org.uk/ccb/
UK Clinical Research Collaboration Tissue Directory and Coordination Centre: https://biobankinguk.org/
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Gilbert, D.C., Speirs, V. Biobanking in radiotherapy trials — a challenge to the clinical research community. Nat Rev Clin Oncol 18, 191–192 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41571-021-00486-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41571-021-00486-0
