By Stephen Ornes
What Happens to a Donated Tumor?
Tissue banks may hold the key to cancer research, but can we overcome the obstacles to unlocking their full potential?
By Stephen Ornes
The Komen bank collects healthy tissue. To understand how cells become cancerous, researchers need to be able to compare malignant tissue with healthy tissue, says Susan Clare, a surgeon and cancer researcher who helps run the Komen bank. Most biobanks collect healthy tissue from autopsies or organ donation, but Clare says the approach the Komen bank takes—to solicit healthy volunteers—yields more useful samples.
Last January, the Komen bank collected about a gram of breast tissue, roughly the size and shape of a piece of mechanical pencil lead, from each of 82 healthy subjects. Since the first similar collection effort in 2005, the bank has collected healthy tissue from more than 400 people. Each donor signs a broad consent, which allows the tissue to be used in unspecified research, determined by the investigator.
The donors were “very motivated,” says Clare. Because the tumor bank arose from the advocacy community, she says, its emphasis is on rapid research. “For them, the idea of having tissue donated that would be unusable because of some problem with a pre-analytical variable or the absence of broad consent or any of those things, well, that was a nonstarter,” she says. “They wanted this tissue out and used and available, to get on with the work.”
Beyond the Bank
Biospecimen science is a fairly new discipline, and it’s going to take some time for researchers to understand how tumor handling affects molecular research—and even more time for that knowledge to inform the burgeoning field of individualized medicine.
In the meantime, those who safeguard tumor banks echo the sentiments of Clare: “The tissue is no good in a tissue bank,” says Tolcher. “We want to get it out and stimulate ideas.”
Rimm, back at Yale’s collection, agrees. “ ‘Bank’ is kind of a funny name,” he says. “Money, when it sits in the bank, gains value. Tissue, when it sits in a bank, loses value. My goal is to get the tissue out of the bank and to the researchers.”
Getting the tumor tissue out of the banks is a step toward understanding what makes a tumor tick—and how to make it stop.
“We want to discover a new piece of biologic knowledge [and] translate that into a product that can actually help patients,” says Compton, of the NCI. “This starts and ends with the patient. It starts with the patient and the donation.” 
(photo credits: Stephen Ornes)