Establishing a Tumor Bank and Challenges

Cancer is a multifactorial disorder and its assessment requires a comprehensive study on cells، DNA، RNA and proteins of tumor samples. This type of research is called “Omics” which includes “genomics” and “proteomics”. Tumor bank is a term commonly used to describe a service collects، stores، and distributes fresh human tumor tissue for the purposes of biomedical and primarily cancer research. Most tumor banks collect their tumor samples from discarded tissues not needed for pathologic diagnosis، after patients undergo surgery to remove the tumor. The tissue is often snap frozen in liquid nitrogen or may also be preserved in special fixatives. Many cancer centers have a tumor bank to supply patient samples of cancer and associated adjacent normal tissue. The change in the methods of diagnosis and the discovery of biomarkers needs to access to sufficient number of samples and providing a tumor bank is an essential step in this case. Annually، tens and perhaps hundreds of surgeries are performed on the tumors in our country that is a vast treasure of cancer cells and it is possible to collect them، establishing tumor banks.