The Wales Cancer Biobank was named as the 2020 UK Biobank of the Year by the UKCRC Tissue Directory and Coordination Centre at their annual Biobanking Showcase event.

The Wales Cancer Biobank was named as the 2020 UK Biobank of the Year by the UKCRC Tissue Directory and Coordination Centre at their annual Biobanking Showcase event.  This year’s Showcase event was held across five afternoons and included some innovative breakout sessions to stimulate remote conversation.

In accepting the award certificate from Gary Rooksby from Achiever Medical (sponsor), Dr Alison Parry-Jones (WCB Operations Director) commented, ‘The Wales Cancer Biobank is proud to receive this award and thanks the sponsor, panel and the UKCRC TDCC.  This is for the wonderful team we have at WCB – it has been a challenging year, not only because of COVID and lockdown but we were applying for continuation of funding and we had a large internal (routine) audit followed by an HTA inspection in January.  The staff were magnificent, pitching in to help with activities not in their job description – we managed to audit 7,000 consents in three months in preparation for the audit and inspection.  COVID and lockdown has given us challenges, as it has many other biobanks, but we are now back up and running and supplying samples again to researchers.  Hopefully the next 12 months will be a little quieter!’