Biobank Network Progress – 2008-2010
In just over a year, the St James’s Hospital Cancer Biobank collected frozen and paraffin-embedded samples from 150 patients with breast cancer and colon cancer. Samples are divided in numerous aliquots and will be available for multiple projects. Breast cancer samples are taken in conjunction with a research project based in the Department of Surgery. This has been achieved by liaising with many members of the hospital staff, including senior management. Beaumont Hospital, in its fifth year of operation, has collected 172 samples from breast cancer and colon cancer patients.
Cork University Hospital is actively recruiting biobank personnel for a new hospital biobank, which is now part of the network. The Cork University Hospital Biobank is scheduled to be part of a large expansion of the hospital’s Histopathology Department to cater for increased cancer services in the third of Ireland’s major cancer centres. CUH will collect breast cancer at first. UCH Galway, the fourth major cancer centre, is set to join the biobank network in April 2009, and will begin by collecting samples from patients with malignant lymphoma. The four hospitals will use the same procedures to ensure samples are of equivalent good quality. Both Cork and Galway will use the same database (CAISIS) as St James’s, and restricted data will ultimately be available to academic researchers and industry for online searches. Biobank salaries for these new network hospitals are completely dependent on donations to Biobank Ireland. We believe that if progress like this can be achieved in “bad times” – with a great deal of help from many people – things look bright for Ireland’s biobank network.