(100SB002) the Establishment of a Clinico-Pathological Network and Database on Hepatocellular Carcinoma in Taiwan (I)

Recent advances in genomics, proteomics, targeted therapy, and personalized medicine have resulted in markedly increased demands for biomarker validation studies, which have changed the landscape of cancer research. The establishment of a good quality cancer tissue bank with sufficient clinical data for translational research became very important. Since hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the number one of the ten leading cancer death in Taiwan, it has been picked up as the target diseases by National Research Program for Genomic Medicine. We have proposed and organized an HCC research network that could coordinate the major medical centers in Taiwan to conduct a prospective study. This network (Taiwan Liver Cancer Network, TLCN) currently includes five major medical centers in northern, central, and southern parts of Taiwan (NTUH, CGMH-Linko, VGH-Taichung, CGMH-Kaohsiung, VGH-Kaohsiung) to conduct a prospective study, so that we will be able to collect HCC patients with various socioeconomic, ethnic and life style backgrounds as well as regional representativeness. The resected HCC and non-tumor tissues will be separated and snap-frozen at each collaborating hospital and periodically shipped to the central tissue bank at NHRI, Zhunan. Other biosamples, such as serum, plasma and blood cells will also be collected and stored in the tissue bank, too. Up to now, we have recruited more than 5000 liver cancer patients with tissue or blood samples and sufficient clinical pathological and virological information. This network has started to accept applications for biosamples from individual PI in Taiwan since 2007, including DNA, RNA, tissue sections and tissue fragment for protein extraction, etc. The user Committee is in charge of the review and approval of the applications. So far, we already have 40 applicants, and have sent out 12712 biospecimens. All applicants are researchers from national universities or medical centers. The website of Taiwan Liver Cancer Network (TLCN) was established in 2006, which is mainly for applicants to check up for the information in the TLCN. We have started to build up follow up database since 2009. The tissue array for various groups of HCC patients were also done for applications. The follow up and survival database will be completed in this summer. With this new information, our biosamples will be highly useful for search of predictive, prognostic markers and development of diagnostic kits, and for validation of their efficiency. We are confident that our HCC network will be one of the largest and best HCC patient database and tissue bank in the world.

Project ID:PC10006-0183
External Project ID:NSC100-2325-B182-006