Central data base and tumor bank

Coordinator:		Prof. Dr. Frank Berthold
Institution:		Universitätsklinikum Köln, Klinik für Kinder- und Jugendmedizin
Homepage:		kinderklinik.uk-koeln.de/klinik-schwerpunkte/onkologie

The asservation of controlled high-quality tumor material linked to a constantly updated clinical data base represents a treasure for biologists and clinicians. This has been realized for neuroblastoma, the most frequest extracranial malignant tumor in childhood with support of NGFN and NGFNplus.
Over the recent 13 years a coverage of 97% of all in Germany diagnozed neuroblastomas has been achieved. The material is quality controlled for tumor cell content (minimum 60% for research) as well as for DNA and RNA integrity. Routinely parts of the tumor tissue is sent to selected labs for molecular diagnostic work-up. The treatment of the patients is influenced by those results. The surplus material is asservated and provided to researchers on request. The independent advisory board decides on approval of material supply. By May 31.2013, the neuroblastoma tumor bank contains samples from 2124 patients including 1672 fresh frozen unfixed tissue, 1252 tumor touch smears (ideal for FISH), DNA samples from 691 patients, RNA from 776 ´samples, 606 paraffin-embedded tissue blocs, and from 884 patients normal counterpart tissues.
The patented tumor box for simultaneous transport of frozen and unfrozen material has been adopted by several other networks and is widely used throughout European centers.