Deposits of tissue and blood samples can help researchers discover and improve treatments for patients, writes CLAIRE O'CONNELL
THESE DAYS banks don’t exactly have a good name. But here’s a bank with a real difference – one where the deposits can help researchers discover and improve future treatments for patients.
That’s the idea behind a “biobank” or bio-resource, where patients (and in some cases healthy volunteers) can donate tissue and blood samples to be used in scientific and clinical studies.
Recent years have seen moves to try to concert biobanking efforts around Ireland – which can range from samples in individual lab freezers to more established resources – so that researchers and clinicians know what samples are available, how those samples have been collected and can access them along with any relevant clinical data that makes studies on the samples even more clinically valuable.
“There’s tremendous interest in biobanking,” says Prof Eoin Gaffney, a consultant histopathologist at St James’s Hospital and a co-founder of the Biobank Ireland Trust.
For six years he has been developing the idea of an all-Ireland cancer biobank network, and it’s starting to gather pace.
“We have started with Beaumont Hospital and James’s Hospital and we will be incorporating Cork and Galway as well,” he says, describing the kind of change this represents.
“Six or eight years ago there was no such thing as a network – surgeons and oncologists were biobanking for their own research. There were freezers all over the place and once a project was over the samples would be still in that individual freezer. But there has been a trend in the last six years for people to collaborate on that, and it makes sense because we are a small country.”
The field of breast cancer research in particular has had an extra boost recently with the announcement of funding for a National Breast Cancer Tissue Bio Resource, which will collect and store tumour and blood serum samples from consenting patients at cancer centres in Cork, Galway and Limerick.
The initiative will work in conjunction with the Biobank Ireland Trust and is being funded for three years through a financial agreement between the Royal College of Surgeons and Aviva, explains Arnold Hill, professor of surgery at Beaumont Hospital.
“We already have it in Beaumont, it’s already happening in St Vincent’s and St James’s Hospitals, and plans are in progress to ensure all eight cancer centres have this resource available,” he says, noting that the All Ireland Cooperative Oncology Research Group (Icorg) will host the database for the initiative.
“We are all working together now to the same agenda – there are 31 breast surgeons in this country in eight hospitals, nobody disagrees with the concept, let’s work together.”
In practice, researchers will apply to work with particular types of samples and a scientific advisory committee will decide whether or not to grant access. The upshot should be improved “translation” of scientific discoveries into the clinic, according to Hill.
“We need to test why certain drugs work on certain patients and no better place to do it than a patient’s own tissue and serum,” he says.
“In theory, not all cancers are suitable to get tissue from, but if you got half of them that would be 1,200 samples per year. That would completely change the speed of discovery and it would help Ireland make a contribution to international field of breast cancer research.”
And in the end, it is patients who will benefit, according to Blanaid Mee, manager of the cancer biobank at St James’s Hospital, which is banking samples from breast and colorectal tumours.
“I think people think it’s mostly about research but it’s more about patients. It will facilitate better science that will enhance the treatment you can give,” she says, adding that she has seen widespread buy-in to the initiative from patients and health professionals alike.
“The uptake is very high, we have had very few refusals from patients. And I think the recession lends itself to the project. Everyone is seeing there aren’t the funds there were in the past, and if you want to do anything you have to collaborate and co-ordinate.”
On a wider level still, there’s also a move to harmonise biobanks in Europe and help facilitiate access to high quality samples for appropriate research, explains Dr Derick Mitchell of the Irish Platform for Patients’ Organisations Science and Industry (IPPOSI).
He is executive manager of the stakeholders forum for Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources Research Infrastructure, an initiative that is looking at the minimum standards needed for biobanks in Europe to be able to network while ensuring the high quality of samples. The proposed model would have a national co-ordinator in each country that signs up, explains Mitchell. “There’s a lot coming together, it’s a pretty exciting time for biobanking,” he says.
See rcsi.ie/brainbank
THINK TANK: BANK ON YOUR BRAIN
You can’t take it with you when you go, but by donating your brain to research when you no longer need it you could help further the understanding and treatments of human brain disease.
That’s the thinking behind the Dublin Brain Bank, which started collecting last year and to date has received 14 donations, registered about 60 donors and fielded around 200 enquiries, according to Prof Michael Farrell, consultant neuropathologist at Beaumont Hospital.
While the bank is interested in receiving tissues from patients who had brain disease to help with research into conditions like Alzheimer’s, motor neurone disease and Parkinson’s, Farrell stresses the importance too of donors who do not have a neurological or psychiatric illness because their tissues can act as “controls” in studies.
And despite the name, the brain bank welcomes donations from outside Dublin too. With the support of pathologists around the country a donated brain can be quickly brought to Beaumont, mapped and banked, says Farrell.
