Life of a sample

Clinicaland biological samples : opportunities and challenges for translationalresearch

The first purpose of this talk is to provide tonnon clinical researchers some main technical, ethical and reglementary issuesfor their access to biological samples and especially tumoral tissues which arestored  in pathology departments or tumorbanks.  The second one is to explain toscientists that their project will not be successful if the sample collectionis not associated with relevant clinical and biopathological annotations

Finally, financial and ethical problems will bediscussed as cancer biobanks funding becomes problematic and there is also anurgent need to refine their policy considering the most frequent tumor subtypeswhich may be available in several biobanks with redundancy and the access ofresearchers to routine diagnostic samples or rare tumor subtypes which are notprimarily stored for research but that can be qualified for research by anEthical Committee.

Samples collected in daily practice are ofdiverse origins and subtypes:  freshtissues, cell suspension, fixed biopsies, surgical specimens. All of them maybe altered by adverse preanalytical factors such as cold ischemia, delayedfixation or freezing times which are not always known parameters. Therefore,research collection can be set up with knowledge of these parameters andalternative procedures such as RNA later prior to freezing. Accreditation ofpathology department will also make possible to limit preanalytical artefactswhich are critical according to the tissue subtype and technique used foranalysis with robust and more sensitive ones.

The research collection needs to be associatedwith basic clinical and pathological parameters but all of them are onlyavailable when a clinical database with evolutive features is designed andmaintained. Despite the efforts of these clinical databases, the life of thesample needs to be managed independently at the biopathology level. In factthere are two different situations:  oneis when the cancer biobank and the biopathology department directly involved inthe research project. Another seen at the Bordeaux University Hospital is whenmore than 10 research collection are setup in the context of regional, nationalor international project with centralized management and funding of theclinical database as well as of the scientific advisory board for access to thesamples.  Despite the presence of suchclinical database, the scientific project cannot be conducted without aspecific reanalysis of biopathological data owing to the diversity of tumourhistological and genetic subtypes, especially when changes in theclassification of the tumor subtypes (lung, liver, lymphoma for example) haveoccurred. Both clinicians and scientists are not aware that their project willnot only need funding for access to tissue but that they will need to involvean expert biopathologist in their project.

Whatever the tumor bank subtype, the processfor storing, management and sample access are regulated through certifiedprocedure NFS 96900 in France. Finally, the access to sample is restricted byethical and regulatory procedures for which the tumor bank is not in charge buthas together with the researcher to cope with.

Cette présentation a été donnée dans le cadre du BRIO SIRICscientific day 3 organisé annuellement par le SIRIC BRIO et qui a pour but deréunir tous les acteurs du SIRIC BRIO et plus largement de la cancérologie àBordeaux.