The NCIC-Manitoba Breast Tumor Bank: a resource for applied cancer research

The NCIC-Manitoba Breast Tumor Bank is one of several tumour banks that have been established through the Molecular Epidemiology Program of the National Cancer Institute of Canada (NCIC). The NCIC-Manitoba Breast Tumor Bank is an example of one model developed to facilitate research designed to translate the findings of basic science into information useful in the clinical arena. The tumour bank's mandate is to provide a national resource that consists of a preassembled dataset of matched samples of paraffin-embedded and frozen tumour tissue with corresponding pathological and clinical data. In the first 3 years the tumour bank has accrued data and samples from over 1800 cases of breast cancer and has provided support for 20 research projects across Canada and the United States.