Barts Centre for Squamous Cancer Tissue Bank
The Barts Centre for Squamous Cancer (BCSC) maintains a research tissue bank to support studies into cancers of the oral cavity, skin and oesophagus. This tissue bank provides a facility for the long-term preservation of human tissue and data from multiple contributing squamous cancer studies. These are fully Research Ethics Committee (REC) and Human Research Authority (HRA) approved studies, where the enrolled patients have already consented for their tissue to be used in future research. By providing a facility for storage under tissue bank ethics, the BCSC tissue bank ensures that these important donations can be used for years to come.
One major contributing study is the Saving Faces Tissue Bank, and we are extremely grateful to Professor Iain Hutchison and Saving Faces Foundation for this donation of over 4000 patient specimens and associated clinical data. You can read more about the clinical research conducted under this important contributing study here: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31611612/. Transparency information for this contributing study can be found at www.savingfaces.co.uk/uncategorised/send-trial-transparency-information/.
In order to ensure that the tissue and data from contributing studies remains useful for research, the HRA has granted Section 251 support for establishing this tissue bank following advice from the Confidentiality Advisory Group (CAG). This is important to enable production of an accurate de-identified record of tissue specimens and clinical data for use in research studies. Only the clinical team and tissue bank manager will have access to identifiable data, which will not be shared with researchers. The use of identifiable data will be limited to the use of name, date of birth, NHS number and hospital number to ensure accurate matching of tissue specimens and patient clinical data. This data will be securely stored and used to facilitate selection of tissue specimens and clinical data for research studies. All identifiable data will be erased prior to handing tissue and clinical data to research teams. Only age at diagnosis, gender and ethnicity will be retained for research purposes. None of these will be linked back to your name, date of birth, NHS number or hospital number.
Opting out
As a condition of Section 251 support, we are required to provide a project-specific opt out. If you have ever consented for use of your tissue in a research study, then you are able to opt out of the use of your identifiable information in processing material for inclusion in this tissue bank. You are also able to opt out of inclusion of your material in the tissue bank altogether. If you wish to opt out, please email the tissue bank Chief Investigator, Adrian Biddle (a.biddle@qmul.ac.uk). You can also opt out of all use of your confidential patient information for research and planning nationwide by using the national data opt out service: digital.nhs.uk/services/national-data-opt-out.