Most Europeans haven't heard of their nation's repositories of human blood and tissue samples. Promote them, say George Gaskell and Herbert Gottweis, or they could fail.
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Gaskell, G., Gottweis, H. Biobanks need publicity. Nature 471, 159–160 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/471159a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/471159a
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Philip Quinlan
Gaskell & Gottweis? article Biobanks Need Publicity (Nature 471, 159?160 2011; http://www.nature.com/natur... is very timely, coinciding with the opening earlier this month of the Breast Cancer Campaign Tissue Bank . This is a national Tissue Bank, based across four centres in the UK which will collect breast tissue and blood samples with the full informed consent of the patient, in accordance with UK law and with approval from the National Research Ethics Service. The need for this type of Tissue Bank was recognised through an analysis of the gaps in breast cancer research, conducted in 2006 by the charity Breast Cancer Campaign in conjunction with around 50 of the world?s leading researchers in this field (Breast Cancer Research 10, R26; 2008 ). This exercise concluded that access to high quality breast tissue was a major barrier in accelerating breast cancer research from the laboratory to the clinic. Although still in development, we hope the Breast Cancer Campaign Tissue Bank will redress some of the concerns raised in the article by Gaskell & Gottweis and place biobanking firmly in the public spotlight in a positive manner.
Valerie Speirs *
Leeds Institute of Molecular Medicine
University of Leeds
St James's University Hospital
Leeds LS9 7TF, UK
Tel: 0113 3438633
Email: v.speirs@leeds.ac.uk
Claude Chelala
Barts Cancer Institute
Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry
Charterhouse Square
London EC1M 6BQ, UK
Tel: 020 7882 5555
Email: c.chelala@qmul.ac.uk
Andrew R Green
Academic Unit of Clinical Oncology
University of Nottingham
Nottingham City Hospital
Nottingham NG5 1PB, UK
Tel: 0115 8231407
Email: andrew.green@nottingham.ac.uk
Lee B Jordan
Department of Pathology
Ninewells Hospital & Medical School
Dundee DD1 9SY, UK
Tel: 01382 496409
Email: lee.jordan@nhs.net
Philip R Quinlan
Surgery and Molecular Oncology
University of Dundee
Dundee DD1 9SY, UK
Tel: 01382 425582
Email: p.quinlan@dundee.ac.uk
J Louise Jones
Barts Cancer Institute
Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry
Charterhouse Square
London EC1M 6BQ, UK
Bart?s Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London
Tel: 020 7882 5555
Email: l.j.jones@qmul.ac.uk
*Corresponding author
Gerry Thomas
I agree this article is very timely and thoroughly endorse the idea of engaging the public. The Wales Cancer Bank (www.walescancerbank.com) has been in existence since 2005, and has consented some 4600 patients with cancer in Wales, including 1,000 breast, 1,000 colorectal and 800 prostate cancer patients amongst a variety of other, rarer cancers. As multiple samples are collected from each patient these figures expand to several 10,000 individual samples. The samples are available to anyone with a valid scientific project, and we have supplied research projects both within and outside the UK. We made a point of involving the Welsh public from the start and in fact brought together a group of patients to help write the patient information leaflets given to all donors to the bank. We have also involved local patient support groups and have a lay liaison and ethics committee that are actively involved in publicity for the Bank. We have great local financial support from Cancer Research Wales,and from the Wales Assembly Government and have found patient advocates to be superb at communicating what we do to politicians in Wales. We have also made a point of putting all of our information, including patient consent forms and SOPs on the web to make our operation and governance visible to all. It is time that we, as scientists, became more available to explain what we do and why we do it to both the general public and the press.
Professor Gerry Thomas, Director of Scientific Services, Wales Cancer Bank email: gerry.thomas@imperial.ac.uk
Professor Malcolm Mason, Director, Wales Cancer Bank email: masonmd@cardiff.ac.uk
Dr Alison Parry-Jones, Manager, Wales Cancer Bank parry-jonesa@cardiff.ac.uk
Paul Schofield
A very timely warning that Biobanks need to communicate much better with the community exactly what they are for, and how society will benefit from their activities. Fears about patient data security, and indeed the loss or sale of patient information, may be ill-founded or exaggerated, but events like the recent high profile losses of government-held private data and sale of supposedly confidential mobile phone information to newspapers, generate a burden of mistrust against which the potential public good is balanced in the minds of many. Whilst it is clear to see how tumour biobanks may directly benefit medical research, the mission of Biobanks with broader remits is not so clear to the general public. One might indeed ask whether the potential applications of these collections are always clear even in the minds of those running them? Biobanks will only succeed with the support of our communities, not just our politicians, and their trust needs to be won through transparency, engagement and clarity of purpose. There are excellent examples of Biobanks where this is the case, but others need to look carefully at these examples in order to avoid Biobankruptcy....