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onCore UK has been granted ethical approval as a Research Tissue Bank by an NHS Research Ethics Committee. All biosamples and information are donated by cancer patients who have given informed consent. Our consent materials have also been approved by the Research Ethics Committee and hospital staff are trained in the onCore UK consent process.
We are committed to a robust framework of ethics and standards, guided by our Ethics and Standards Advisory Panel, and the onCore UK Ethics and Standards Statement is available in print on request.
onCore UK is committed to Quality Standards. There is currently no recognised Global Quality Management Standard for biobanks. Therefore our processes and procedures are designed, implemented, monitored and updated at regular intervals, against available and applicable international Best Practices and guidelines for biobanks (see links in Policies and Practices). Samples are collected, transported and stored in accordance with written Standard Operating Procedures and staff fully trained in the procedures.
In support of our commitment to Quality we are actively implementing a Quality Management system, to become one of the few biobanks to achieve certification to an appropriate Quality Standard.
Biosamples are a precious resource and are used up in Quality Control testing hence it is not possible to test every sample. To overcome this problem onCore UK will arrange to routinely test a proportion of the samples we hold. In the case of tissue samples, histological information will be available from the diagnostic pathology report. Details of the content of specific blocks is obtained as part of our quality assurance testing.
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