The Northern Ireland Biobank (NIB) is a collaborative project between Queen's University Belfast (QUB) and the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust (BHSCT).
The vision of the Biobank is to host and distribute a collection of well defined, quality assured biological samples to support translational research programmes in Northern Ireland and beyond.
The NIB Steering Committee oversees the good practices of the bank. NIB has approval from ORECNI (reference 11/NI/0013) to collect, store and distribute samples to researchers.
The NIB is registered with the UKCRC Tissue Directory and Coordination Centre which has been set up to support the work of biobanks by improving access to their human tissue samples for research purposes.
Phase 1: the collection of tumour and non-tumour control tissues and patient-matched blood samples, with urine and saliva samples when appropriate. NIB focuses on malignancies from the gastrointestinal tract, thoracic cavity, breast, lymphoreticular system, head and neck, genitourinary and gynaecological tracts. The NIB also has approval in place to collect samples of tissues and blood from individuals with premalignant or potentially malignant conditions and to access samples from BHSCT pathology archives. BHSCT Tissue Pathology is fully CPA-accredited.
Phase 2: the collection of haematological (‘liquid’) malignancies for research building on the infrastructure established by Phase 1.
Researchers wishing to seek further information about the NIB hosting sample collections or for general information should contact the NIB Administrator at:
Northern Ireland Biobank
Centre for Cancer Research and Cell Biology
Queens University Belfast
97 Lisburn Road
Belfast BT9 7BL
Tel: 028 9097 2915
Email: nibiobank@qub.ac.uk
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