THE BIOBANKING RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURE BBMRI_CZ AS A CRITICAL TOOL TO ENHANCE TRANSLATIONAL CANCER RESEARCH – AN INTERIM REPORT 2014

Background:

We introduce the national research bio banking infrastructure, BBMRI_CZ. The infrastructure has been established under governance of the Ministry of Education and became a founding member of the European bio banking infrastructure BBMRI.ERIC. It is designed as a network of individual biobanks where each bio bank stores samples obtained from associated healthcare providers.

Materials and Methods:

The constructed system of bio banks at BBMRI_CZ consists of two types of storage for patient samples – long-term storage (LTS) repository, and short-term storage (STS) repository. The LTS repository collects various types of tissues (tumour, metastases, non-tumour) classified by diagnosis, serum at surgery, genomic DNA and RNA. This part of the bio bank is filled with low frequency, typically at the time point of patient’s primary surgery. STS repository contains sera only and is iteratively updated at each patient visit to the hospital when the blood specimen is taken for the determination of tumour markers. The STS serum repository thus stores leftovers of tumour marker patient material for a period of up to one year.

Results:

In the years 2000–2014 bio bank in MMCI archived in LTS repository the following numbers of biological material: 38,068 tissue aliquots from 9,169 patients, 15,822 serum aliquots from 5,416 patients, 3,160 DNA samples. In the course of 2014 the STS repository archived 45,080 serum samples.

Conclusion:

The unique design of storing not only the tissue material but also longitudinal strings of sera enables access to patient-derived material during the course of the complex patient treatment, thus refl ecting pathophysiological and treatment-induced changes in the course of the disease. Designed this way, the research Biobanks will become truly critical tools to enhance translational cancer research.

This study was funded by European Regional Development Fund and State budget of the Czech Republic (RECAMO: CZ 1.05/ 2.1.00/ 03.0101) and by Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (BBMRI: LM2010004).

Literature:

1. Holub P, Greplova K, Knoflickova D et al. The Biobanking Research Infrastructure BBMRI_CZ: a Critical Tool to Enhance Translational Cancer Research. Klin Onkol 2012; 25 (Suppl 2): 2S78–2S81.