Find out what samples the Tissue Bank has available to order.

Available material

We offer a variety of cancerous, material from both female and male breast cancer patients. Using the criteria below the Tissue Bank can narrow down the samples suitable for your work depending on your scientific question:

  • receptors – ER, PGR and HER2
  • patient gender
  • menopausal status
  • invasive characteristics – tumour type and grade 
  • non-invasive characteristics – DCIS status/LCIS status
  • sample characteristics – preservation method, tissue type, primary or recurrence.

We are also able to provide samples of non-cancerous tissue, either snap frozen or formalin-fixed paraffin embedded (FFPE). Non-cancerous tissue available includes:

  • normal tissue from cosmetic reduction mammoplasties (no history or family history of breast cancer)
  • tissue from prophylactic mastectomies (carriers of genetic mutations or family history that predisposes breast cancer)
  • contralateral tissue
  • surround or adjacent tissue to the tumour

Material from the Breast Cancer Now Tissue Bank is available to researchers from both academic and commercial institutions. The Breast Cancer Now Tissue Bank aims to recover some of the costs for supplying samples to the research community.

material available and the cost recovery applied is outlined below:

Sample type

BCNTB cost recovery
  Commercial

Academic 
(33% discount)

 BCN funded
Unstained FFPE
Single section £12 £8

n/a

Each additional section from same case

 £3 £2 n/a
H&E stained FFPE
Single slide £15 £10 n/a
Snap frozen

Single section

 £20

£13.50

 n/a
Each additional section from same case £5

£3.30

 n/a
Frozen 
Aliquot £100 £66 n/a
TMA
Pre-made

£0.50 per core + £75 TMA fee for 1st section

Additional slides @ 10% cost of 1st section

 33% discount on commercial cost n/a
Blood
Whole blood freshly drawn 8-10ml (vacutainer)

£100

 £66 n/a
Buffy coat – usually all obtained per vacutainer, 1- 1.5ml £10 £6.50 n/a
Serum – 500ul £10 £6.50 n/a
Plasma – 500ul £10 £6.50 n/a

Services
Admin fee (per request)

£100

 n/a n/a

Additional data

 £40/per hour to retrieve

Bespoke Tissue

 £60/per hour to process
Bespoke TMA construction £80 per hour to construct

*Applicants are responsible for courier costs

Bespoke requests

If you are interested in material or data that is not listed above, please contact us as we would be happy to discuss further whether the BCNTB can help you with your sample requirements.

Archival collection

The BCNTB boasts a unique collection of archival FFPE tissue blocks which are available to the research community. This collection contains pathological samples from 1940s through to 1970s, including breast biopsies and cancerous and benign lesions of the breast. The data available on the samples includes detailed pathological features at collection.

Our archival collection offers researchers an insight into breast cancer and how the disease has changed since the 1940s, as well as access to samples of tumour tissue that have not been affected by neoadjuvant therapy. FFPE tissue can successfully be used for a range of processes including immunohistochemistry, RNA and DNA extraction. Please see the article 'The value of archival tissue blocks in understanding breast cancer biology' for more information.

At present the archival collection is not available to request online. Please get in touch for more information.