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Research Tissue Bank Ethics Approval

Arden Tissue Bank has been granted ethical approval by the HRA- Research Ethics Service.

This enables potential research projects to gain ethical approval for their studies via the Arden Tissue Bank.

Please note: Under our HRA ethics approval we are NOT able to provide ethical approval, or samples to:

  • The tobacco industry
  • Reproductive cloning
  • Termination of pregnancy research
  • Animal testing

Specifically for those projects that wish to use tissues once diagnosis has been established i.e. “tissues” surplus to diagnosis.

This may be “tissues” that the clinical teams deem not for diagnosis e.g. surgeons, physicians, OR that which is surplus to diagnostic need within the UHCW pathology department across all Pathology departments e.g. microbiology, molecular pathology, virology, cellular pathology and cytology, haematology, biochemistry.

Examples of this include:

  • Non-diagnostic/surplus tissue from surgery, drainage, wound dressings
  • Formalin Fixed paraffin embedded tissues from pathological archives
  • Blood Fractions surplus to diagnosis i.e. Serum, Plasma
  • Microbiology swabs
  • Non-transplantable tissues via NHS Blood and Transplant

 It is not necessary for projects and researchers to make project-based applications for ethical approval to separate ethics committee’s to use tissue or data supplied by Arden Tissue Bank.

They will be deemed to have ethical approval once the application has been approved by the Arden Tissue Bank management committee.

The link to the application form for tissues and/or ethical approval can be found here.

A diagram of the applications process can also be found here.

Approved Research Projects

Arden Tissue Bank have approved and supported in excess of 70 projects since receiving ethical approval in 2012.

Examples of some of the projects that we have supported can be found here. (coming soon)