The Chernobyl Tissue Bank, an international collaboration to investigate the relationship between the exposure to radiation in childhood and thyroid cancer

The only unequivocal radiological effect of the Chernobyl accident on human health is the increase in thyroid cancer in those exposed in childhood. In response to the scientific interest in studying the molecular biology of thyroid cancer post-Chernobyl, the Chernobyl Tissue Bank (CTB: www.chernobyltissuebank.com) was established. The project is supported by the governments of Ukraine and Russia, and financially supported (US$3 M) by the European Commission, the National Cancer Institute of the USA, the Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation of Japan and the World Health Organization. Full informed consent is obtained from donors; each case is subject to pathological review by an international panel. Aliquots of extracted nucleic acid (RNA and DNA from tissue, DNA from blood) serum are made available to researchers worldwide. Quality control is carried out on each extracted tissue and blood sample; the presence of tumour is confirmed by frozen section prior to extraction. 1605 cases have been pathologically reviewed so far; frozen samples are available on 1254. The majority of the cases are papillary carcinomas (924). Paired tumour-normal samples are available; extracted nucleic acid is available on 337 cases. Samples of blood are available from 711 of the 1605 reviewed cases. Material from the project is currently being used for a variety of scientific projects in Europe, the US and Japan, using techniques from cDNA array and comparative genomic hybridization to immunocytochemistry. More than 2000 aliquots of nucleic acid and 5000 paraffin sections have been released. Researchers using the resource agree to provide their results back to the project on a case-by-case basis for entry into the project database in Swansea.