Tata Translational Cancer Research Centre (TTCRC), Tata Medical Centre, Kolkata is in the process of setting up of a cancer bio-bank. The initiative has been supported by the Tata Trust which has chipped in Rs.75 lakh.
The infrastructure would include a repository to bank patient clinical samples, healthy controls and populations participating in future screening. It is equipped with specialized bio-banking software and storage solutions equipment like liquid nitrogen tanks and freezers where multiple small aliquots of donated samples will be stored in 0.5 to 2 ml cryovials.
The objective is to create national and international collaborations for academia, industry and start-ups in cancer biomarker discovery and validation. The creation of a multidisciplinary team of clinicians and scientists would help to improve cancer outcomes in east and north-east states in India.
“The initial establishing facility cost is around Rs.75 lakh to store approximately 4,000 aliqouts in liquid nitrogen and 10,000 in 80 freezers. As we apply for research grants, we hope to include some of the project specific operational costs,” Professor Usha Menon, associate director, Tata Translational Cancer Research Centre, Tata Medical Centre, Kolkata, and head, Gynaecological Cancer Research Centre, Women’s Cancer Institute, University College London, UK told Pharmabiz in an email interaction.
The TTCRC bio-bank is on similar lines to that of the UKCTOCS bio-bank which was funded by the University College London and St Bartholomew’s Hospital. It now stores over half a million samples with 50 million aliquots housed in an off-site commercial cryo-facility. In-order to make it a viable revenue generation driven model, more recently a biomarker validation spin-off company ‘Abcodia’ was set up at UCL to manage the growing industry and academic collaborations, she added.
The cancer bio-bank at TTCRC with well-annotated samples and written informed consent for secondary studies would be the foundation for much of the future work.
There would be a lot of attention to cancer screening because of the ample evidence that cervical and oral cancer tests for India could save lives. We are interested in developing implementation models in diverse populations. Efforts are on to setting up pilot projects in the Assam tea plantations and rural Nagaland, she said.
Communication, training and quality assurance ensure successful cancer screening. “Now TTCRC has teamed up with the software major TCS to build clinical trials and screening platforms. A network of cancer bio-banks on a single IT platform where data and samples are collected using the same protocol would be an achievement. But it is something that we have struggled to achieve in UK and are still working on as it requires a consortium of industry, clinicians and scientists, stated Prof. Menon.
There is a growing incidence of gynecological malignancies of ovary, cervix and uterus. India reports one in six women diagnosed for gynaecological cancers based on GLOBCAN estimates for 2008. Challenges to tackle the condition covers treatment cost, availability of facilities, low awareness and late presentation of advanced cancers. Education, screening and early detection efforts could help overcome some of these issues, said Prof. Menon.