Medical Device Daily Contributing Writer

LONDON – The Confederation of Cancer Biobanks has been established in the UK to break down barriers hampering cancer research on human samples.

At present, it can be difficult for researchers to assemble sufficient samples – especially of rare cancers – as the number available in a single bank is too small. But as the methods used to prepare and preserve them often differ between repositories, combining samples from more than one bank may generate misleading results.

That shortcoming has more and more serious consequences as tumor and blood samples are becoming increasingly important in cancer research, especially in translational research and drug screening.

The founding member of the confederation is onCore UK (Hertfordshire), set up earlier this year to work on developing standard protocols and to provide a service for clinical researchers in academe and industry that want to outsource the collection of samples.

onCoreis a not-for-profit company, funded by the UK Depart of Health , the Medical Research Council and Cancer Research UK , and independent of the research community.

Brian Clark, onCore’s CEO, said the confederation will lead to the use of common ethical standards in taking samples and common standards for storing them. “Also, by providing access to larger numbers of high-quality samples, it will make possible many research studies that historically have been difficult to carry out.”

At its formation, the confederation brings together onCore with the Tayside Tissue Bank , the Glasgow Biobank and the Wales Cancer Biobank . Membership is open to any UK institution that agrees to work the agreed standards.

The establishment of the new body is underpinned by the Human Tissue Act, which came into effect at the beginning of September, governing all collection and use of tissues and organs.

Adrian McNeil, CEO of the Human Tissue Authority , which oversees the act, said one the benefits of the act is to encourage centralization of samples under a single governance system. “This will benefit researchers who will know where the tissue is stored and can rely on its quality,” he said.

While retaining their independent identities and management, members of the confederation will work toward a harmonized system for collection, storage and access to samples and will agree common ethical and legal standards.

A web-based portal, the Biosample Expeditor Service, will be developed to show researchers all the samples that are available, coupled with anonymous patient information.

Private umbilical cord banking discouraged

A physician issued a warning that National Health Service maternity units should not encourage commercial banking of umbilical cord blood. His opinion appeared in a recent issue of the British Medical Journal and provides the recommendation that, instead, women should be encouraged to donate “altruistically” to public blood banks. Umbilical cord blood is rich in stem cells that can be used to treat diseases such as childhood leukemia. Bone marrow is used for this purpose, but cord blood is cheaper and easier to obtain and less likely to trigger a harmful immune response or rejection in the recipient. Thus, interest has been growing in banking cord blood as insurance against future disease.

But this has negative implications for the NHS and little chance of benefit, says Leroy Edozien, MD, a consultant obstetrician and gynecologist at St Mary’s Hospital (Manchester, UK). Public banks collect cord blood which has been altruistically donated, and the blood is used to treat unrelated recipients or is collected from families with a known genetic disease that is treatable by blood stem cell transplantation.

Since 1996, the NHS has been banking donated cord blood through designated public banks run by the National Blood Service and there is universal approval of the storage of this blood. Commercial, or private, banks operate collection and storage of a baby’s cord blood for later use by that person or their siblings should they develop an illness. This “just-in-case” collection has been criticized by numerous medical bodies and is not recommended. The scientific arguments against commercial cord blood banking include the chance of the blood being used are very small, the alternatives such as bone marrow, and the speculative claims about how cord blood could be used to treat disease. Edozien argues that commercial blood banking also raises serious resource, legal and ethical issues for NHS maternity units. It should therefore be NHS policy not to facilitate umbilical cord blood collection by its staff, he concludes.

Hi-Art at Heidelberg

The University Clinic Heidelberg in September celebrated 100 years of radiation oncology, commemorating the establishment of the Czerny-Klinik (originally the Institute for Experimental Cancer Research) in 1906 by Vincent Czerny, a radiotherapy pioneer. As part of the celebration, the Czerny-Klinik held a symposium on radiation treatments from TomoTherapy (Madison, Wisconsin), focused on the first technical and clinical experiences with a TomoTherapy’s Hi-Art System in the German-speaking countries.

The Heidelberg clinic presented its first 15 patients treated on the Hi-Art System, including cases that could not have been treated sufficiently with conventional technology.

Thomas “Rock” Mackie, PhD, co-founder of TomoTherapy, discusssed the history and future of TomoTherapy technology and how the Hi-Art System can be used to lower dose to sensitive tissues. Additional Symposium speakers, including Prof. Dr. Guy Storme of AZ VUBBrussels and Prof. Dr. Klaus Herfarth of University Clinic Heidelberg , addressed topics ranging from image guidance and adaptive radiotherapy to site planning and installation.

Prof. Dr. J rgen Debus, Medical Director of the clinic’s Department of Radiooncology and Radiation Therapy, reported that about 200 radiation oncologists and physicists from all over Germany, Austria and Switzerland were present for the event. The clinic is the first facility in Germany to offer TomoTherapy radiation treatments for cancer.

The Hi-Art System is designed to target radiation to the patient’s tumor while limiting damage to surrounding tissues.

In collaboration with the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), the Radiotherapy Department of the University Clinic Heidelberg has introduced a number of new techniques, including stereotactic and 3-D conformal treatment and IMRT.