Centre for Immunology and Infection
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A joint venture between the Department of Biology and The Hull York Medical School
Introduction 
In collaboration with York Teaching Hospital NHS foundation Trust, the University of York has established the York Tissue Bank (YTB): a tissue bank to help research into human disease. We aim to collect, store and build a repository of human tissue samples, such as urine, blood and tumours. These can then be given to researchers for their studies. These studies will aim to improve our understanding of human health and potentially lead to new methods of diagnosis, better treatments and vaccines for a wide range of diseases. We rely on participants to voluntarily gift their tissue samples for this vital future research.
Guidance for members of the public
The Human Tissue Authority (HTA) has recently published guides to the public, they set out your basic rights when dealing with an establishment regulated by the HTA. The guides also explain how the use of human tissue is regulated in England, Northern Ireland and Wales. This includes who can give consent for different activities, the information you should receive and options for using and disposing of tissue. There are eight guides in total, each relating to the Codes of Practice we provide to professionals and can be found here.
Approvals
The tissue bank has been approved by the Health Research Authority (National Research Ethics Service) Leeds East Research Ethics Committee (ref: 15/YH/0016); our license number granted by the Human Tissue Authority under section 16 (2) (e) (ii) of the Human Tissue act 2004 is 12604.
Documents
All participant donations will be received with fully informed consent. You can view the Consent form and information sheet v4 (PDF 
, 176kb)
Current Holdings
Our current holdings of "Fit and well" Cervical Tissue samples are described here at the UKCRC database.
A description of our holdings is also described in our publication in the Open Journal of Bioresources: Bioresource of Cervical Tissue Explants from Healthy Women
A publication outlining our methodology for cryopreservation of our available cervical tissue was published in the journal Cryobiology in August 2017, you can view it here.
Application process
To apply to work under the Univerity HTA licence (12604), please complete the Application to work under UoY HTA license (MS Word 
, 27kb)
To apply to transfer samples from other approved Tissue Banks into YTB, please contact us for advice and complete the HTA SOP060 Acquisition and Transfer (MS Word , 60kb)
Contact us
If you would like any more information about the tissue bank and the work we do, please contact James Fox, the Tissue Bank Manager: biol622@york.ac.uk
Publications
A list of publications utilitising the York Tissue Bank will be posted here.
The source of our holdings of cervical tissue is described here, our tissue bank is published as a bioresource here.
Other resources at the University of York
Cellbank
Bloodwise Childhood Leukaemia Cell Bank: http://www.cellbank.org.uk/
Cell Bank is a national collection of samples from children and young people with paediatric haematological malignancies. Samples include live cells from bone marrow, plasma from peripheral blood and CSF. The Bank also holds a collection of HLA typed cord blood.