The Biobank Unit of the Assistance Publique des Hôpitaux de Marseille (Timone Hospital site)

Site location: AP-HM Service d'Anatomie pathologique et Neuropathologie, Hospital Timone, Marseille, France

Contact information:

Contact: Dr. Dominique Figarella-Branger, M.D., Ph.D.

Tel: +33 491 38 55 26

E-mail: Dominique.figarella-branger@ap-hm.fr

Web: www.biobank-paca.com/

Date of operations: (date of formal start of current bank operation): 1994

Date range of cases (date of first and last case accrued): July 1994-present

Category of biobank: Basic research tumor bank

Primary research focus of biobank (Basic, Translational, Epidemiological, Clinical): Basic; Translational; Clinical

Membership of biobanks (networks, affiliations): Biobank-PACA (www.biobank-paca.fr; Canceropôle PACA (www.canceropole-paca.fr); INCa (www.e-cancer.fr)

Major source of funding for biobank: Public funds

Proportional funding sources for biobank:

Institution core budget: 40%

Public targeted donation/foundation: 40%

Grants: 15 %

User fees: 5%

Example input statistics:

Overall response to consent (Yes/No/Unknown %): 100%

Total individual cases held: 1,348

% cases associated with frozen tumor biospecimen: 100%

% cases associated with frozen tumor and blood biospecimens: none

Example output statistics:

Approximate # of studies supported last year: 10

Approximate # of cases released last year: 89

Publications in past year (based on biobank and users): 10

In your view, what are the most valuable/high priority cases in your biobank?

The AP-HM biobank mainly focuses on brain tumors, sarcomas, lung tumors and urology. In addition, peculiar attention is paid to children's cancer.

What are your major challenges?

The major challenge of AP-HM biobank is to increase the number of specimens registered in the biobank PACA catalogue. However, our policy is to register only high quality specimens (associated with consent, high quality derived fractions, representative of the disease with mirror pathological fraction). Other specimens are being kept for clinical purposes. In addition, we want to increase the number of blood biospecimen associated with frozen tumors.

What would you do with $1 million to improve the value of your biobank?

1) Create a long term conservation site encompassing the 2 AP-HM biobanks with automatic survey.

2) Improve the quality of clinical associated resources with dedicated people.

3) Increase the number of high quality specimens (dedicated people to obtain consent, to help pathologists).