Cancer Tissue Bank

The Cancer Tissue Bank (CTB) is a dedicated research collaboration between clinicians, scientists and patients at Barts Health NHS Trust. It will create a unique and vital resource for cancer tissue of all types for researchers at Barts Health NHS Trust and, its sister academic institution Queen Mary University of London, as well researchers across the whole world.

CTB was founded based on the feedback given to a number of clinicians at Barts Health NHS Trust. Patients and their relatives wanted to donate samples for cancer research but were unable to do so. There were questions being asked:

How could have my diagnosis been done earlier?
Is there a simple test to monitor if my cancer will come back?
Is there some research being carried out by you to help future cancer patients?
How can I help research at your hospital?
Can you not develop a test which will help my children not to face the same future and uncertainty I am facing?
Why is there nothing being done to help me and my family in future?

CTB is supported by Barts Cancer Institute. Their extensive internal review suggested that the main obstacle for advancement of cancer research was a shortage of good quality, clinically annotated tissue - the raw material for research. The CTB will be a resource in an attempt to remove this hurdle and thus accelerate cancer research.

Thus CTB is an initiative based on patient, clinician and scientists desire to create a unique research resource where patients and their relatives can donate their samples in a standardised manner. The samples will be collected and stored with written informed consent based on an ethically approved protocol. This protocol and policy will be under constant review.

Please email us at enquiries@cancertissuebank.org for further enquiries.

Queen Mary University of London is the sponsor for this study based in the United Kingdom. We will be using information from your medical records in order to undertake this study and will act as the data controller for this study. This means that we are responsible for looking after your information and using it properly. Queen Mary University of London will keep identifiable information about you for 20 years after the study has finished.

Your rights to access change or move your information are limited, as we need to manage your information in specific ways in order for the research to be reliable and accurate. If you withdraw from the study, we will keep the information about you that we have already obtained. To safeguard your rights, we will use the minimum personally-identifiable information possible.

You can find out more about how we use your information at http://www.jrmo.org.uk.

Copyright and Database right for the database created for Cancer Tissue Bank is held by Queen Mary University of London and its employees Hemant Kocher, Claude Chelala and Dayem Ullah. All rights reserved. Access to the information held in the Cancer Tissue Bank is provided for non-commercial research purposes only. No part of the database or any derivative information generated therefrom may be reproduced in any form without the authors’ express permission.