Promoting research
The Macquarie University Cancer Biobank is unique in the breadth of its activity and the innovative research it will promote.
It includes all types of cancer patients undergoing treatment in Macquarie University Hospital and other parts of Macquarie University Health. These cancers include breast, colorectal, prostate, brain, liver, gastrointestinal, bladder and other cancers.
What we do
The Macquarie University Cancer Biobank:
- collects fresh biofluids and stores fresh and paraffin-embedded tissue specimens
- maintains longitudinal specimens collected during a patient’s treatment journey
- stores viable tumour and immune cell populations.
This biobank enables research that is focused in critical unmet clinical needs, that are common to all cancers – new effective treatments, novel drug targets, predictive and prognostic markers, modelling cancer responses and monitoring patient outcomes in real-time.
Importantly, it provides the resources (static and viable models) to support clinical care with translational research. This is an important part of Macquarie University Health's mission of 'Heal. Learn. Discover.'
The Macquarie University Cancer Biobank has a three-tier organisational structure.
- The Macquarie University Health Clinical Research Executive is the principal management group.
- The Biobank Access Committee is responsible for the assessment of research applications made to the Biobank for access to materials and/or data.
- The Operations Committee is responsible for the day to day running of the Biobank.
Our stakeholders are:
- Macquarie University ethics committiees
- FMHHS lab operations
- Macquarie University advancement
- clinicians/researchers.
Macquarie University Cancer Biobank has been acknowledged for our contribution in the below published research papers: