Bringing together clinical, pathological and research data to drive breast cancer biobanking into a new age

The BCNTB strives to honour donations made by patients by ensuring that data generated from every specimen is used to its maximum potential. The Bank implements a sharing policy to ensure that data generated by projects using its specimens can be accessed and re-used by the research community beyond the scope of the project from which it was originally generated, resulting in benefits for researchers and patients.

The Analytics Hub allows researchers to view, query and analyse data generated using BCNTB specimens and data from large-scale publicly available projects. Within this domain, researchers can link different datasets; test hypotheses; undertake dynamic and complex analyses, such as the study of spatial-temporal differences; allow researchers to build on previous results; replace, reduce and refine the unnecessary exposure of patients to damaging or ineffective therapies; predict outcomes; and minimise duplication of effort. Combining data from multiple projects also delivers methodological and computational advantages, with the larger sample size providing increased statistical power to results and increased stratification of patients. This is particularly relevant when studying rare subtypes, events or exposures.