TY - JOUR
T1 - Tumour banks
T2 - Well-guarded treasures in the interest of patients
AU - Oosterhuis, J. Wolter
AU - Coebergh, Jan Willem
AU - Van Veen, Evert Ben
N1 - Funding Information:
Virtual tumour banks are databases of microscopic images of the samples stored in a tumour bank. Databases could be set up to include a network of tumour banks from different medical centres. The images could be accompanied by an anonymous set of data, including patient sex, age, exposures, tumour site, stage and histological diagnosis, outcome of disease and response to therapy. This application of telepathology enables authorized researchers to browse the content of a tumour bank without physically handling the samples.Virtual tumour banks make it possible to select the best specimens for a particular experiment, and simplifies planning of collaborative efforts. For example, tumour samples from a variety of databases can be screened for inclusion in large-scale studies, such as tissue microarray analysis, to determine the prognostic value of the expression patterns of certain tumour types. A virtual tumour bank is currently under development at the data centre of the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer. This project — named Tubafrost — has been funded by the European Commission and has the goal of creating a virtual tumour bank that provides access to the collections of frozen tissue samples of ten major European cancer centres5.
PY - 2003/1
Y1 - 2003/1
N2 - In order for the genomics revolution to change how we diagnose, categorize and treat cancer, scientists and clinicians must have access to tumour samples. There has therefore never been a better time to create banks of tumour tissue. Collecting and storing tumour samples and their associated data, however, creates numerous methodological, ethical, legal and technical problems. How can we leap these hurdles in a responsible manner and still make full use of the wealth of information that can be obtained from them?
AB - In order for the genomics revolution to change how we diagnose, categorize and treat cancer, scientists and clinicians must have access to tumour samples. There has therefore never been a better time to create banks of tumour tissue. Collecting and storing tumour samples and their associated data, however, creates numerous methodological, ethical, legal and technical problems. How can we leap these hurdles in a responsible manner and still make full use of the wealth of information that can be obtained from them?
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0037271078&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/nrc973
DO - 10.1038/nrc973
M3 - Review article
C2 - 12509769
AN - SCOPUS:0037271078
SN - 1474-175X
VL - 3
SP - 73
EP - 77
JO - Nature Reviews Cancer
JF - Nature Reviews Cancer
IS - 1
ER -