NATIONAL BIOBANK CONSORTIUM OF TAIWAN

National Health Research Institutes Biobank

Background

• Recent advances in genomics, proteomics, and increasing demands for biomarker validation studies have changed the landscape of cancer research. The establishment of a good bank for translational research became very important.
• Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and lung cancer is the leading cancers in Taiwan and thus been picked up as the target diseases by the Government.
• The Goal  is to establish a research network to provide sufficient clinical information and good quality biosamples for investigators in Taiwan and next, in the world.

Research Design and Methods

• 5 hospitals across Taiwan were invited to join. All participating centers will establish and follow a standard protocol to collect liver tumor patients as well as their clinical, pathological and epidemiological information.
• A team consists of hepatologist, surgeon and pathologist will be formed in each collaborating hospital to provide these materials or information. There will be a well-trained research nurse provided and stationed at each collaborating hospital to help with all the collection procedures.

Niche of NHRI Biobank

• The biosamples and database are collected from the six hospitals in north, middle and south of Taiwan, so our biosamples are more representative for Taiwan’s population.
• The biosamples and database collected are all saved in the Zhunan campus of National Health Research Institutes (not in the hospitals).
• All specimens are processed by a good central pathology core laboratory to ensure good quality and correct diagnosis. Viral titer was examined for all patients with blood samples

Niche of NHRI Biobank (2)

• Well organized clinical and follow up data are available.
• This Biobank is governed by an Ethic Committee and a scientific review Committee, which composed of scientists from famous research institutes covering north, middle and south of Taiwan (independent from the collaborating hospitals).
• Thus, NHRI Biobank is able to function very neutral and independently and can be designed as friendly as possible to the applicants.

Note on the application flowchart

• Currently NHRI Biobank can not accept application from scientists of other countries or foreign companies directly.
• All applicants need to be Taiwan scientists. If not, they need to find one collaborative researcher in Taiwan to make applications.
• After we have been approved as biobank by MOST, we should be able to accept application from industry.

Basic Clinical and Survival data

• Gender, age, smoking and drinking history, tumor size and gross patterns, vascular invasion, pathology stage (AJCC), cirrhosis, LN and  metastasis.
• AFP, AST, ALT, HBsAg, HBV DNA, AntiHCV, HCV RNA, genotype, etc.
• Survival data includes operation date, recurrence date, time of death, cause of death, last follow up date.
• Can also accept the application for database only.

Hospital URL：https://www.nhri.edu.tw/

Biobank URL：https://biobank.nhri.edu.tw/