Northern Sydney Collection Centre

Abstract

Site location: Kolling Institute for Medical Research, Royal North Shore Hospital, St Leonard's, Sydney

Local contact: A/Prof Deborah Marsh

Date of operations (date of formal start of current bank operation): July 2007

Date range of cases: July 2007–present

Example input statistics:

Overall response to consent (Yes%/No%/Unknown %): 98% Yes

Total individual cases held: 780

% cases associated with fresh-frozen tumor biospecimens: 52%

% cases with paraffin embedded biospecimens: 70%

% cases with blood and blood derivatives: 80%

In your view, what are the most valuable/highest priority cases in your biobanks?

1) Ones with a complete set of sample types – frozen tissue, serum, whole blood, formalin fixed paraffin blocks, complete datasets, clinical follow-up for as long a period as possible are of greater value as they facilitate multiple platforms/analyses.

2) Different breast cancer types are valuable to different studies, but those with longest period of follow-up are the most valuable.

3) More broadly, the bank should be representative of the community it is collecting from to be of the most value.

4) Samples that have been rigorously collected with minimal time from the patient to liquid nitrogen (for fresh frozen), rigorous standards for time on ice prior to serum processing etc. are valuable as these will be the best quality for downstream applications (RNA, any discovery based project etc.).

5) Samples collected from women with recurrence.

What are your major challenges?

1) Instability of longer term funding. Poor co-ordination between state and federal levels for funding initiatives for bio-banking.

2) Collection of complete sample sets for all patients. One reason for this is that breast tumors are getting smaller and pathologists will not allocate fresh frozen tissue for small tumors.

3) Access to clinical information collected in minimal datasets by state bodies.

4) Opt out versus opt in consenting.

5) Institutional (hospital) support for an integrated tumor banking service involving surgery, pathology and tumor bank staff. At present, the challenge is that things run ad hoc, with ‘integration’ requiring a lot of time building relationships rather than being a standard part of job descriptions, best practice for clinical care etc.

6) Collection of information on status from genetic screening.

What would you do with $1 million to improve the value of your biobanks?

1) Collection of research data back into the bank from studies using samples, e.g. array data, in an easily searchable and accessible form.

2) Streamlining of clinical data collection from other state initiatives who collect the same data (e.g. CINSW minimal datasets and Cancer Registry data)

3) In-house pathologist to review all samples.