Chernobyl Thyroid Tumor Bank

G. A. Thomas, E. D. Williams and on behalf of the members of the Scientific Project Panel of the NISCTB1

University of Cambridge Strangeways Research Laboratory CB4 8RN Cambridge, United Kingdom

To the editor:

A large increase in thyroid carcinoma incidence among those exposed as children to the high levels of fallout from the nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 1986 has been reported. This increase was noted about 4 yr after the accident and is continuing. It is important that knowledge pertaining to the consequences of this accident that may benefit mankind, in general, and be of value in responding to future nuclear accidents is not lost.

Accordingly, the governments of the three states most affected, Belarus, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine, have joined with the European Commission, the United States National Cancer Institute, the Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation of Japan, and the World Health Organization to create a tumor bank for thyroid tumors in each of the three countries and to make nucleic acids from both tumor and normal tissue available for study by groups interested in radiation or thyroid carcinogenesis; the project is coordinated from a center in Cambridge, United Kingdom.

This material forms a valuable resource of a large number of tumors of a defined type, directly related to exposure to a known mutagen at a known time. Only tissue not needed for diagnosis and obtained with full ethical consent conforming to HHS-NIH guidelines will be used. [Informed consent forms were approved by the Institutional Review Boards in each of the three centers and at the National Cancer Institute. Copies of the relevant informed consent forms are available, if needed, by the investigators carrying out research using material from the Newly Independent States Chernobyl Tissue Bank (NISCTB).] Nucleic acids will be extracted from tumor tissue and from normal thyroid; DNA from blood is expected to become available at a later date. The bank, at present, holds DNA and RNA extracted from about 200 thyroid tumors occurring in patients who were under 19 at the time of the accident; this number is expected to increase considerably in the next few years. An international group of pathologists has provided an agreed diagnosis for all extracted tumors.

Information regarding applications for and the use of these materials is now available on the NISCTB website (http://www.srl.cam.ac.uk/nisctb).

We hope that the establishment of this tumor bank will lead to work that will increase our understanding of both biological effects of radiation and thyroid carcinogenesis, and provide an example of international collaboration that can be followed in other situations.

Footnotes

1 D. V. Becker (Cornell Medical Center, New York, NY); T. I. Bogdanova and M. D. Tronko (Institute of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Kiev, Ukraine); E. P. Demidchik (Minsk State Medical Institute, Belarus); E. Lushnikov and A. F. Tsyb (Russian Academy of Medical Sciences); S. Nagataki (Radiation Effects Research Foundation, Japan); V. Ostapenko (Research Institute for Radiation Medicine and Clinical Endocrinology, Minsk); A. Pinchera (University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy); G. Souchkevitch (World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland); M. Tuttle (Memorial Sloan-Kettering Medical Institute, New York, NY); and S. Yamashita (Atomic Bomb Disease Institute, Nagasaki, Japan). Back

Received September 28, 2000.





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