This blog series aims to provide an introduction to biobanking. It includes posts on why the donation of samples is vital for research and the different ways patients and the public can donate samples.
The national data opt-out In order to make the samples you donate really useful for research, Biobanks need to link them to data about you. Recently there has been changes to the control you have over this data. We talk to Alison Stone and Chris Carrigan from the patient movement use MY data to find[…]
The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks Today, samples donated for medical research are anonymised so that any work performed on them cannot be traced back to the donor. But donation for research has not always worked like this. In 1951, tumour cells from a patient in the USA were grown and sent all over the[…]
Cost recovery in Biobanking When patients donate samples for research they do so with goodwill as a gift to research. So why is there sometimes reference to ‘the cost of samples?’ We explain more about the use of Cost recovery in Biobanking in our latest blog. How can tissue cost money when it is donated[…]
It is difficult to generalise what to expect when you donate your tissue to a biobank, as each biobank will operate in a slightly different manner. So this has been intended as a guide describing some of the key points during the various stages of biobanking to give you an idea what is likely to[…]
What are samples? A sample can take many forms. It can be a piece of human tissue taken from a healthy or a diseased part of the body, but it can also be a sample of bodily fluid such as blood, urine or saliva. The reason samples are taken is to allow researchers to perform[…]
Cadaveric Tissue for Research It is well known that tissue donation from the living is vitally important to research and is normally in the form of small samples from “surplus to diagnostic” material or tumour biopsy. While this process allows many types of research to be undertaken, the research undertaken can be limited and so[…]