In 2012 IBBL (Integrated BioBank of Luxembourg) became partner in a European Seventh Framework programme (FP7) project and validated Standard Operating Procedures for the isolation of molecular components from archived tissues. The results of the project, which aimed to sustain access to tissue samples that were exposed to radioactivity, have now been published.
Supported by the European Union within the FP7 Euratom programme, the STORE project was set up to rescue endangered data and biological samples from past experiments investigating the effect and dangers of ionizing radiation, while providing a platform to share and save data from modern studies. Coordinated by the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (Bfs) in Germany, the STORE project involved overall 8 European partners. IBBL’s role in the consortium consisted in assessing the robustness and reproducibility of the consortium’s proposed methods for the extraction of DNA, RNA and proteins from FFPE tissue. In addition to establishing and validating these Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for the analysis of radiobiological data and archived biological materials, the STORE consortium partners set up a standardised and secure public data repository. This data warehouse gathers not only data from a large number of radiobiological experiments and projects, but also facilitates the physical access to tissues by acting as a directory. Both the data repository and directory should help to minimise animal experiments as far as possible, by making information available on those experiments that have already been conducted. The SOPs on the other hand, should guarantee persistence and accessibility of radiobiological samples, while fostering harmonisation within the radiation research community.
The complete results from the STORE project are available as a Final Report Summary on the European Commission’s website.