In January 2026 the WCB’s Digital Lead, Liz Merrifield proudly presented the Wales Cancer Biobank as an evolving bioresource within an academic poster for the BioResource Data Accelerator project at the Festival of Genomics and Biodata, held in London’s Excel Centre. This conference is the UK’s largest conference which focusses specifically on genomics and biodata innovations and research.

Our poster provided information on how the Wales Cancer Biobank are responding to the aspirations of our clinical and academic colleagues: we are supporting a programme of work to enable the WCB to become Wales’ first national bioresource, and therefore providing a greater level of functionality of the data currently available to researchers.

Activity workstreams within our evolution have included establishing pipelines to flow diagnostic data from the NHS All Wales Medical Genomics Service (AWMGS) and also partnering with the National Imaging Academy Wales to explore how radiological and other imaging data can be augmented to our sample archive to create truly multi-modal datasets. Furthermore,  we are also working closely with the WCB team on patient-facing initiatives to modernise (digitise) its consenting procedures.

On 25th to 26 February 2026, Liz also promoted these work streams at the CRUK data-driven conference, held in Edinburgh. This was another exciting opportunity to engage with the wider cancer community and promote the WCB and its work streams and how data will be used to revolutionise and personalise cancer research in the future.