Research supported by the HBRC
HBRC facilitates sample collection in line with local and national research strategies, having been approved to collect samples and associated clinical data from most NHS Trusts in the West Midlands.
Our services can be combined with those of enabling technologies in the College of Medicine and Health's Technology Hub to provide an end-to-end research advantage from bedside-consent to leading-edge analytics.
We can collect and supply:
- Fresh tissue
- Fresh-frozen tissue
- Formalin-fixed tissue and paraffin-embedded sections
- Blood and (if outsourcing to another facility) blood derivatives
- Urine and other bodily fluids
- Associated clinical data
Our disease settings are:
- Almost anything handled by local NHS hospitals
Our pool of potential donors includes:
- Adult patients with mental capacity
- Children
- Healthy volunteers
- Adults with reduced mental capacity
- One-off donations by express wish
Our contributing NHS Trusts include:
- University Hospitals Birmingham
- Birmingham Women & Children's
- Sandwell & West Birmingham
- Royal Wolverhampton
- Worcester Acute
Our material is:
- surplus to diagnosis taken at the time of surgery or treatment, or
- waste material, or
- limited additional material taken for research purposes, or
- material left over from clinical trials, or
- archived diagnostic material, or
- material from deceased donations
Our associated clinical data is:
- always rendered anonymous to researchers before we release it
What research can we support?
HBRC's ethical approval is broad enough that it can receive almost anything, from almost anyone, for use in almost any scientific research (with some important exclusions – see below). Our consent model is generic and enduring, so multiple donations are covered by a single act of consent.
Because of this, UK law requires HBRC to operate under an HTA licence, which necessitates a strict Quality Management System (QMS) to control, monitor, and document everything we do.
The HBRC QMS is inspected by the Human Tissue Authority, and it is regularly audited by the University's Clinical Research Compliance Team, as well as being regularly checked by ourselves. This ensures that what we do can be trusted by patients, public, and researchers alike.
What research can't we support?
The HBRC remit is very broad, but there are some things which the protocol does not permit. We cannot:
- Put something back into a human (therapeutic cloning or implantation)
- Perform reproductive research (research involving gametes or abortion)
- Support intentional diagnostic services (deliberate paternity testing, infection status, survival prognosis)
- Support activities which are not “discovery” or “translational” research (cosmetics/drugs testing for approvals, market research)
- Allow activity involving the onward sale of material either defined as “tissue” in UK law, or deemed as material otherwise needing ethical approval by the Human Tissue Authority and Healthcare Research Authority