[Establishing the Danish CancerBiobank]

The establishment of Danish CancerBiobank to hold frozen blood and tissues from patients with primary cancer was made possible by a donation from the Ministry of Health and Prevention.

Danish departments of pathology already have a long experience with biobanks as they have handled paraffin-embedded tissues and have undertaken national registration of data in the nationwide pathological databank, Patobanken, for years. Furthermore, departments of clinical biochemistry are experienced in ensuring the quality of biobanks including that of blood samples. Knowledge from these two areas together with visits to biobanks in other countries was used to design and establish the Danish CancerBiobank. Five centres at the university hospitals in Aalborg, Herlev, Odense, Copenhagen and Arhus received the donation.

A group of experts was established and made specifications for data registration and technical advice for the handling of blood and tissue and produced a draft handbook on quality assurance.

The Danish CancerBiobank is unique nationally and internationally owing to 1) national recommendations for handling the materials included in the biobank, 2) centralized nationwide data registration, 3) correlation between information on blood and tissue for the single patient and 4) linking of the information to the final diagnosis through Patobanken. Furthermore, in the future it will be possible to connect to the nationwide clinical databases and other national registries. The final criteria of success for Danish CancerBiobank will be the publication of international research results of clinical importance for the treatment of patients diagnosed with cancer.