Ireland will miss out on a chance to boost cancer research and possibly even lose out economically unless we set up linked biobanks to store tumour tissue for research. That's according to a leading cancer expert, who addressed a public meeting on biobanking in Dublin last night.
Storing human cancer tissue in biobanks for research can accelerate discoveries that might otherwise take decades through standard clinical trials, said Prof Gerry Thomas, principal scientist at the government-funded Wales Cancer Bank, who spoke at the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland yesterday.
Biobanks are essential if we want to turn cancer into a disease where people live for 10, 20 or even 40 years and they die of something else, Prof Thomas told The Irish Times.
Biobanks store donated blood samples and cancer tissue left over from biopsies which would otherwise be thrown out. The biobank makes this valuable material available to researchers, along with anonymised clinical data about the patient, she explained.
Her experience with the Welsh biobank, which stores blood and tissue samples from cancer patients, has shown that people feel positive about donating for research. "It's a pretty awful time for them and to be able to do something positive is really great," she said.
And although concerns are often raised about consent and data protection in relation to biobanking, she stressed that the Welsh biobank has encountered little problem.
"Consent isn't an issue. We have had only one person refuse on the grounds of not agreeing with the project out of 2,000 patients," said Prof Thomas, who is also professor of molecular pathology at Hammersmith Hospital in London.
"And nobody can be identified from the information given to researchers, that's very important. The identity will be secret, it's done by a linked number to the clinical database, because we do want to find out what has happened to these patients.
"The combination of human tissue and clinical information will transform cancer research because now scientists all over the world can access tissue with linked data like patient age or outcome," she explained.
"There's no substitute for looking at human cancers, they are fantastically complex things and they are very diverse. Biobanking means you can now access tissue from subsets of patients and treatments, and it could take 10 or 20 years to generate that sort of information in clinical trials."
Prof Thomas noted that Ireland already has excellent research infrastructure and highly trained scientists.
"I think you need to get yourselves organised, and if you add biobanking into what is already a very good mix of science, technology and infrastructure you would have biotechnology companies coming in, so it would improve the economy. I think it would improve healthcare and also give a good boost to the people working in the health services, because it's something positive."
Also addressing last night's meeting were pathologist Prof John O'Leary from Trinity College Dublin and histopathologist Prof Eoin Gaffney who directs Biobank Ireland, a charity that aims to set up a network of linked cancer banks in Irish hospitals.
