Opinion: Want to help with medical breakthroughs? Donate some extra cells to a biobank
Right now, it’s possible that cells from my body are growing in a lab somewhere and are being used to test new cancer drugs.
After I was diagnosed with neuroendocrine tumors, a rare type of cancer, I went through surgery to remove the tumors and chose to donate them to a biobank. I gave consent for the cells from my tumors to be used to create cell lines and organoids (three-dimensional tissue cultures) as models to study neuroendocrine tumors, since it is a poorly understood, under-investigated disease with limited treatment options.
