Tissue banks trigger worry about ownership issues.

Tissues have what a new generation of researchers need to fi ght cancer: molecular clues to disease origins and a wealth of potential targets for new drugs. But some National Cancer Institute leaders consider a potential shortage of human tissues the single greatest barrier to cancer research. Now, with high-throughput, robotic systems analyzing tissue samples by the thousands, shortages have become even more acute. Tissue banks, also known as biorepositories, are emerging to meet growing demands, but their contents have become mired in a troublesome controversy over who really owns the samples that patients donate for research. Universities, patient advocates, and researchers are all asking if tissue banks should assume exclusive control over donated samples, or should patients retain property rights over their tissues — and the ability to determine who gets to use them and how? As it stands now, tissue banks appear to have de facto ownership over sample inventories and the right to use them as they wish. But a small, vocal minority is trying to shift ownership back to the donors. The outcome could have major consequences for cancer research. If patient ownership is allowed, tissue banks might be crippled by administrative nightmares that impede research, some experts say. But opponents of the status quo counter that patients must own their samples so that they can make informed choices about how the tissues will be used. Opponents of stem cell science, for instance, wouldn't want their tissues used for that type of research. And many wouldn't want their tissues going toward for-profi t ventures. So far, the question has been managed by the courts, because Congress has passed no legislation settling the issue. The absence of congressional action has created a vacuum currently fi lled by a body of case law that, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges , " unambiguously rejects the concept that individuals retain any property interest in their excised tissues. " The Patients' Case Proponents of patients' rights have yet to concede defeat, however. Many now rally behind an appeal of their latest loss: The U.S. District Court for Eastern Missouri decided against patients seeking control over tissues that they donated to William Catalona , M.D., a urologist who was formerly at Washington University in St. Louis. Catalona — who popularized the widely used prostate-specifi c antigen test for prostate cancer — began collecting tissue samples in the early 1980s. …