4th EUTROC
Ovarian cancer tumour banks and collaboration
Dr Elena Braicu – Charite University Hospital, Berlin, Germany
I presented a tumour bank ovarian cancer which is a twelve year European experience and is now also the tumour bank of EUTROC. We just presented the last recruitment of the patients; we have now more than 3,000 patients included. We also plan to establish a platform for virtual biobanking that would be accessible for all EUTROC members and for other scientists. We have some collaborative studies inside EUTROC but also outside EUTROC; we are just doing a project together with Imperial College about predictive biomarkers for surgical outcome and another project with the University of Vienna, with principle investigator Robert Zeillinger, it’s about early detection of ovarian cancer. Now we plan a known study to predict risk in patients with pelvic mass and this will be a clinical and preclinical study; we will detect biomarkers, CA-125 and we will combine it together with sonography.
What are some of the challenges in this field?
The problem is now there are a lot of biobanks, each network is having its own biobank, each new study or clinical trial is establishing a new biobank. I think the most important thing is to really create a platform for a European or trans-European biobank for gynaecological oncology and cancers, not only for ovarian cancer.
Are there too many biobanks?
I don’t think so. We have, as a total, more than 3,000 patients but we can still not cover the whole biology of ovarian cancer. The problem is we should shorten the ways to the samples and this is why we need this open access. ESGO, which is the European Society for Gynaecological Oncology, they are also having their own translational network and they are also setting up a biobank. We are, for the moment, the largest biobank in Europe, there’s also the GCIG in America who are also having their own biobank and David Huntsman who is now establishing a Canadian biobank for ovarian cancer, having 2,000 patients, so it’s a lot happening around the world.
What were the difficulties in creating this network?
First is to motivate the physicians to include the patients, to do the follow-ups, to document the clinical data, to establish the SOPs and to do a quality control of the samples, the procedures, the SOPs, and of course the budget.
What are the benefits of the network?
We actually have quicker access to the samples, we can more quickly get into the clinical trials by developing biomarkers for targeted therapies. We just want to say that we EUTROC’s biobank project is open for any clinicians who would like to enrol patients or for any researchers who would like to do projects using our samples.
