New Northern Ireland Biobank will be central to cancer research locally, nationally and internationally

i-Path Diagnostics is being has been chosen as the cloud based digital pathology platform to study human tissue samples, improve understanding of cancer, develop new drugs and identify patients who will benefit from drugs.

£1.9m of funding has been secured to establish Northern Ireland’s first comprehensive cancer tissue collection aimed at supporting local, national and international cancer research.   i-Path Diagnostics will develop the Northern Ireland Biobank’s  IT systems to support and manage this new bank of cancer tissue samples. 

Thousands of samples will be collected over the next few years together with extensive clinical, treatment, response and survival data. 

Des Speed, CEO of i-Path Diagnostics said: “We are very pleased to be playing a central role in the creation of this new facility in Northern Ireland.  The new Biobank will play a crucial role in diagnosis and the development of the new treatments and therapies for cancer that we hope will have a positive impact on the lives of many people in the years ahead.” 

The i-Path software will store, organize and manage all virtual slides, giving cancer researchers within Northern Ireland and across Europe the ability to search for the right samples and retrieve tissues to aid new scientific discoveries. 

The system will also give researchers across Europe access to high resolution digital images of the tissue samples remotely using i-Path’s proprietary web-based software.  

i-Path’s world-class technology removes the need to post microscopic slides to different locations and creates opportunities for remote analysis of tissues and high throughput computerised analysis of tissue biomarkers, and remote TMA management and manual scoring. 

The Northern Ireland Biobank Scientific Lead, Dr Jackie James said: "This repository of tumour samples is essential for the development of new targeted therapies in cancer and will support the local, national and international development of  Stratified Medicine". 

i-Path will work with the local cancer research community to develop a resource that will underpin cancer research for years to come.