What we do

The Xarxa de Bancs de Tumors de Catalunya (XBTC) offers biological samples of tumours and scientific, technical and methodological support services for researchers at public entities and in the biomedical and health industry, in Catalonia or abroad, to address the needs of their research projects.

The XBTC follows a Quality Management System to ISO 9001:2015 standard and carries out yearly tests: since 2014, over 75% of the frozen samples have an RIN above 6.

Transfer of samples

XBTC - Xarxa de Bancs de Tumors de Catalunya

The XBTC manages all the biological samples of tumours and their associated data for eleven Catalan hospitals and ensures their traceability and quality. To this end, we work closely with the scientific and ethics committees at the centres so that samples and the associated data are always transferred in line with scientific viability criteria and the regulations established in Spanish and European law.

Requirements for sample requests:
Valid Research Ethics Board approval letter for the study where the samples will be used.
Request form for the corresponding samples.
Material Transfer Agreement (MTA).
The researcher promises to cite the source of the samples in any paper published as a result of their use, with the following phrase: “We are indebted to Xarxa de Bancs de Tumors de Catalunya (XBTC) financed by the Oncology Plan of Catalonia”.
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XBTC - Xarxa de Bancs de Tumors de Catalunya

Technical services

  • Receiving, processing and communicating sample requests
  • Support in drafting legal/ethics documents
  • Preparing and shipping the samples and associated data

Support in searching for samples in other biobanks

Technical, scientific and legal/ethics guidance

  • Multi-centre collection
  • Collections from clinical trials
  • Registry with Carlos III Health Institute (ISCIII)
  • Separation and processing of serum, plasma, buffy coat, stool, urine and other biological fluids
  • PBMC isolation
  • Processing frozen and paraffin-embedded tissue
  • Slices on slides and in paraffin test tubes and frozen
  • Tissue Microarrays (TMA)
  • Fluorescence in situ hybridisation (FISH)
  • Immunohistochemistry
  • Histological staining
  • Laser-capture microdissection
  • Liquid- and solid-phase extraction of nucleic acids
  • Nucleic acid quantitation and quality control
  • Genomic DNA amplification

Optical and fluorescence microscopy

Coding, labelling and transporting samples

  • Chain of custody at room temperature, 4 °C, -20 °C, -80 °C and -196 °C
  • Monitoring cooling equipment in real time and keeping logs of temperature checks
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