Welcome to the NUHS Tissue Repository (TR) website

Our mission: To provide researchers at NUH and NUS with high quality samples and associated clinical information in a manner that is safe, efficient and ethical.

Our values: Quality, Integrity and Service

Posted date: 13 April 2012

*Include matched, unmatched and specimen pending QC

Posted date: 02 Feb 2012

The national grant funding body, NMRC, had specified that the cost of acquiring bio-specimen materials should be factored in the grant application.

Cost recovery for material obtained or services provided by TR is essential to maintain the operational feasibility and sustainability of the facility. TR is a not-for-profit, BRC (Biological Resource Centre) facility. The budgetary bio-banking information reflects research costs associated with sample collection, processing, costs of consumables, storage and distribution charges. TR will be able to assist in the budgeting for biomaterial requests for researcher's grant proposal.

Click here to download the details budgetary bio-banking schedule.

X. Lin, C. Eng, R. Singh, C. Woo and V. Sorokin. Optimization of tissue collection workflow helps to Reduce Ischemia Time. Biopreservation and Biobanking. March 2011, 9(1): 72-114.

Peter H. Watson, Rivka Ravid, Chon Boon Eng, Jan-Eric Litton, Jim Vaught, and Anita Matusan. Biopreservation and Biobanking. September 2011, 9(3): 213-216. “What Are the Main Roadblocks to Transnational Biobank Collaboration, and How Can We Overcome Them?”

Choong, L.-Y., Lim, S.-K., Chen, Y., Loh, M.-C.-S., Toy, W., Wong, C.-Y., Salto-Tellez, M., Shah, N. and Lim, Y.-P. (2011), Elevated NRD1 metalloprotease expression plays a role in breast cancer growth and proliferation. Genes Chromosom. Cancer, 50: 837–847. doi: 10.1002/gcc.20905.

W.C Zhang, Ng S.C, H. Yang, A. Rai, S. Umashankar, S. Ma, B.S. Soh, L.L. Sun, B.C. Tai, M.E. Nga, K.K. Bhakoo, S.R. Jayapal, M. Nichane, Q. Yu, Du. Ahmed, C. Tan, Wong P.S., J. Tam, A. Thirugananam, M.S. Noghabi, Y.H. Pang, H.S. Ang, P. Robson, P. Kaldis, R.A. Soo, S. Swarup, E.H. Lim, B. Lim. Glycine decarboxylase is a metabolic oncogene critical for lung cancer initiating cells and tumorigenesis. Cell 2012 Jan 20; 148 (1 – 2): 255-72.

To read more, click here.

Posted date: 31 May 2011

TR presented a poster on the "Reducing Cold Ischemia Time For Tissues Banked at NUH-NUS Tissue Repository, Singapore" (Xu LL, Tee SG, Cheong WK, Thamboo TP, So JBY, Khor PW, Teng MP, Rafman H, Ng SC, Lee A, Eng CB, Singh R).

Sessions topics for the meeting cover the following areas:

• Impact on Large Scale and Global Science
• Impact of Biorepositories in Clinical Trials and Prospective Studies
• Innovative Technologies
• Valuing the Benefit of Biorepositories to Stakeholders
• Governance Models & Return of Research Data: Implications for Participants and the Public

For more details, see http://www.isber.org/mtgs/2011/

Posted date: 31 May 2011

CTVS presented a poster on the "Optimization of Tissue Collection Workflow Helps to Reduce Ischemia Time" (X. Lin, C. Eng, R. Singh, C. Woo, V. Sorokin).

Posted date: 9 May 2011

To read more, click here

Posted date: 18 April 2011

Congratulation to Dr Ni Ni Win for passing her CTR exam in April 2011. With this, the HCR now has a full strength of CTR qualified Cancer Registrars.

Dr Aye Thiri Myint, Senior Cancer Registrar qualified as a Certified Tumor Registrar (CTR) by passing the examination of the US National Cancer Registrars Association in November 2008. Dr Wentong Yang and Dr Aye Thida Mon passed the CTR exams in April 2009 and Nov 2009 respectively.

For further information: www.ctrexam.org. For more on the Hospital-based Cancer Registry: NUH HCR

Posted date: 8 March 2011

A second meeting between Cancer Registrars from Singapore Cancer Registry and NCIS Cancer Registry was held on 4 March 2011 at NUHS. This is a joint initiative to improve quality of cancer data collection across Singapore.

The Cancer Registrars from both sides discussed the latest trends in cancer data collection and re abstracted a few of the previous year’s cases and discussed results to ensure uniformity of cancer data collection across Singapore.

These meetings would be a regular feature henceforth, and will be held every 3 to 4 months at either NRDO office or NUHS.

This initiative would go a long way in educating cancer registrars on the latest coding methodologies and improving quality of cancer data collection in Singapore.

Posted date: 13 July 2010

(Quoted from the news) SCIENTISTS from A*Star have made three successive breakthroughs in key areas of cancer research.

Their work, published in top scientific journals Cancer Cell, Nature Cell Biology, and Cancer Research, sheds light on the mechanism behind cancer metastasis, suggest why breast cancer cells live as long as they do, and show a better way to detect and fight cervical cancer.

A team of scientists led by Dr Zeng Qi , from Agency of Science, Technology and Research's (A*Star) Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB) made a discovery about how PRL-3, a key protein, is regulated in the body.

For the full article, refer to http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_552873.html

Lai Han-Wei , 2010. A*Star scores 'hat-trick'. Straits Times, [internet] 13 Jul.

NUH-NUS Tissue Repository has recently been granted IRB approval to collect blood and other biomaterials like bone marrow, body fluids, hair, nail, saliva etc from patients at NUH.

To start with, TR would be collecting blood from cancer patients who are being selected for tissue collection and banking at TR. The blood would be collected during the patient's operative procedure in OT by the duty anaesthetist. The blood, so collected, would be frozen down into it's components viz plasma, serum, buffy coat and a part for cell immortalization purposes.TR envisages to collect around 200 to 300 blood samples from cancer patients/year.

With implementation of this service in August 2010, TR would thus, be able to provide blood and blood components, in addition to tissues, from cancer patients to biomedical researchers across Singapore.

With this IRB approval TR can now also help PI's consent, collect and store all kinds of biomaterials, such as those mentioned above, for their studies.