UCL Royal Free Hospital Biobank

The physical repository was established in Nov 2009 and is located within the Royal Free London NHS Trust, London UK. The UCL-RFH Biobank provides a biorepository facility to user groups on a cost-recovery model. Types of biospecimens include Serum, Plasma, Cells, Tissue, DNA, Urine etc. In particular, samples considered 'relevant material', such as tissues and cells, which are licensed by the Human Tissue Authority (HTA), can be stored long term. Existing holdings where appropriate can be transferred to the BioBank at the Royal Free Campus. The physical repository has a planned onsite capacity of 1 million samples. Samples can be stored at -80’C in mechanical freezers or -180’C in vapour phase liquid nitrogen, in either 1ml or 2ml cryotubes. The Biobank is licenced by the HTA (substantive licence No. 11016) and is a satellite site of the clinical transplant laboratory (Centre for Cell, Gene and Tissue Therapeutics) based at the Royal Free Hospital. Over the past 5 years, the demand for the biobank’s facility has increase exponentially, increasing between 50%-100% year on year. The biobank currently provides biorepository facilities to 46 user groups who collectively have stored 200,000 aliquots.

Services

  • Cell culture
  • Data analytics
  • Digital imaging
  • Immunohistochemistry - scoring
  • Immunohistochemistry - staining
  • Nucleic acid extraction

Bespoke collection capabilities:

  • Benign neoplasm of liver (disorder)
  • Carcinoma in situ of liver (disorder)

Contact Information

Email:
a.gander@ucl.ac.uk
Address:

UCL-Royal Free Hospital Biobank
Institute of Immunity and Transplantation, Centre for Cell, Gene and Tissue Therapeutics
Royal Free Hospital
Pond Street
London
Greater London
NW3 2QG
England

Annual Statistics

Year Access Requests Received Access Requests Approved
Internal External Commercial Internal External Commercial
2015 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
2016 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
2017 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
2018 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
2019 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
2020 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
2021 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
2022 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
2023 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
2024 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A