Human tissues for research purposes: a conference in the House of Lords
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Human tissues for research purposes: a conference in the House of Lords Margaret Clotworthy
Received: 27 November 2009 / Accepted: 30 November 2009 / Published online: 13 December 2009 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009
Abstract The challenges to using human tissues in research are many and varied. However, there is little consensus on how concerns raised by researchers should be addressed, and who should be responsible for ensuring that patients continue to benefit from medical research carried out using human tissues which have been ethically donated or collected after surgery, or where organs donated for transplant are unsuitable for this purpose. A conference in the House of Lords sought to bring together stakeholders from all areas of human tissue research to discuss the problems experienced, share solutions, and form a Working Party to carry the conference momentum forward into action in the near future. Keywords Human tissues Fresh tissue Non-transplantable organs Ethics Human Tissue Act Pathology Bureaucracy Autopsy Public outreach
On 20th October a conference was hosted by Prof the Lord McColl FRCS in the House of Lords to discuss the barriers to using human tissues in research, and ways of overcoming them. Pathologists, researchers from academia and big Pharma as well as tissue
M. Clotworthy (&) Safer Medicines Trust, London, UK e-mail: [email protected]
supply or assay companies and of course, tissue banks, attended. Although there was a strong UK emphasis, Dolores Baldasare from the US International Institute for the Advancement of Medicine gave a fascinating presentation on how her organisation manages to coordinate the collection and distribution of nontransplantable organs throughout the USA (as well as distribution abroad), and provided delegates with a pack containing all of the information and consent forms which they use, information which is bound to be of great interest, particularly to those currently engaged in establishing tissue collections. The presence of the French Science Attache´ in London, as well as a senior scientist from French CRO PelviPharm, ensured that the European perspective was represented. The meeting was called due to widespread anecdotal evidence that researchers find it increasingly difficult to obtain access to the human tissues they need in order to carry out their research. This assessment was borne out in the run-up to the meeting by the publication of three reports into the issue (Human Tissue Authority 2009; National Cancer Research Institute 2009; onCore UK 2009). The opening presentation by Dr Bob Coleman (independent consultant to the pharmaceutical industry and science advisor to Safer Medicines Trust), emphasised the importance of human tissues in research, as results from studies using other species simply do not necessarily translate to the clinic, as
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indicated by the 92% failure rate of potential new drugs in clinical trials (FDA 2004). He pointed out the serious gaps in the supply of ce
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