@article{75943559c9d44d72bc988c0fb350298e,
title = "TuBaFrost 1: Uniting local Frozen Tumour Banks into a European Network: an overview",
abstract = "TuBaFrost is the consortium responsible for the creation of a virtual European human frozen tumour tissue bank: a collection of high quality frozen residual, accurately classified tumour tissue samples, which are stored in European cancer centres and universities. This virtual tissue bank, searchable on the internet, has rules for access and use, and a code of conduct to comply with the various legal and ethical regulations in European countries. The easy accessibility and the European scale of the bank will result in the availability of a large number of samples even of rarer tumour types. Standardisation of collection, storage and quality control throughout the network is achieved minimising inter-institutional variability. A website providing access to upload, search and request samples is a key tool of the tissue bank. The search engine makes use of virtual microscopy. An overview of the development of the European virtual frozen tissue bank infrastructure is described in this paper. The various key aspects are described in more detail in a series of articles to appear in this Journal.",
keywords = "Bio-repository, Frozen tumour tissue bank, Law and ethics, Quality control, Standard operating procedures, Tissue bank network, Virtual microscopy, Virtual tissue bank",
author = "Riegman, {P. H.J.} and Dinjens, {W. N.M.} and Oomen, {M. H.A.} and A. Spatz and C. Ratcliffe and K. Knox and R. Mager and D. Kerr and F. Pezzella and {van Damme}, B. and {van de Vijver}, M. and {van Boven}, H. and Morente, {M. M.} and S. Alonso and D. Kerjaschki and J. Pammer and Lopez-Guerrero, {J. A.} and {Llombart Bosch}, A. and A. Carbone and A. Gloghini and I. Teodorovic and M. Isabelle and D. Jamin{\'e} and A. Passioukov and S. Lejeune and P. Therasse and {van Veen}, {E. B.} and Lam, {K. H.} and Oosterhuis, {J. W.}",
note = "Funding Information: The European human frozen tumour tissue bank or TuBaFrost project was funded by the European Commission within the 5th framework of the division {\textquoteleft}Quality of life and living resources{\textquoteright} under project number QLRI-CT- 2002-01551, with the aid and commitment of the involved scientific officers J. Namorado, M. Vidal, O. Kelm and S. Jungblud. We thank Ms. K.M.M. de Wildt for her management support during the project. Funding Information: The development of the European Human Frozen Tissue Tumour Bank has been funded by a European Commission project grant and as the funding period ends there are already a number of institutes collecting high quality tissues for the network. In the coming years it is important to enlarge the platform of collectors and disseminate information about this resource to potential users. Therefore, it is crucial to operate under the umbrella of a large influential European cancer organisation that plays a pivotal role in cooperation between and standardisation for cancer institutes in Europe. The European Organization of Cancer Institutes (OECI) was asked and decided to totally adopt and integrate the TuBaFrost infrastructure to make future use of this sophisticated infrastructure that has already been established with strong support from this organisation. This relationship is synergistic as the OECI members can easily access large amounts of high quality tissue specimens giving them more critical mass for future use and in joint project proposals. Furthermore, the OECI has a program to establish comprehensive cancer centers where care, prevention, research, development and education are integrated and multidisciplinarity is optimized, to improve quality of care and innovation. Tissue banking in a network is one of the aspects of a comprehensive cancer institute. In the future networked biorepositories can be expanded to other types of tumour bio-repositories in the form of xenografts, low passage cell lines and body fluids e.g. blood, serum, buffycoats, urine, bone marrow, cerebrospinal fluid etc. can be organised and shared in this unique way. ",
year = "2006",
month = nov,
doi = "10.1016/j.ejca.2006.04.031",
language = "English",
volume = "42",
pages = "2678--2683",
journal = "European Journal of Cancer",
issn = "0959-8049",
publisher = "Elsevier Ltd.",
number = "16",
}