Belgian Cancer Registry

Newsletter June 2026

 In March 2008, the nationwide virtual tumourbank project was launched by the Belgian Minister of Health, Ms. Laurette Onkelinx (initiative 27 of the Belgian Cancer Plan). The Belgian Virtual Tumourbank (BVT network) encompasses the tumour biobanks from eleven Belgian university hospitals (a list of these hospitals is available on the BVT website) that collect and store residual human tumour samples locally. In order to facilitate the search for tumour samples scattered among different Belgian institutions, data collected at sample level are made available for researchers via the online BVT catalogue (BVTc) application. A high quality of data on the tumour samples requested by scientists for research in oncology is guaranteed by automatic and manual controls performed by the BVT project team at the Belgian Cancer Registry.

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FEEDBACK FROM USERS 

At this moment (June 2026), around 150,000 registrations including 132,381 primary tumour samples and 17,445 metastasis samples, are available in the online BVTc application.
To check if specific samples are available for your research in the catalogue, you can either request full access to the BVTc or complete the online sample availability request form. After completing a sample availability request (SAR) or after accessing the BVT catalogue (BVTc), the users receive a survey. Topics covered in the survey include the procedure, sample usage and suggestions to improve. The current newsletter includes results from 18 users, 10 from SAR users and 8 from BVTc users.

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 Figure 1: Summary of the BVTc full access versus a sample availability request

 

Table 1: Overview how users got into contact with BVT

 

The procedure for requesting access to the BVTc was experienced normal by six users (75%) and easy by two users (25%). The time taken to receive access was considered fast by two users (25%), normal by five users (63%) and slow by one user.
When completing a sample availability request, users were asked the reason why they did not request access to BVTc. Most users needed a fast result (50%). Two users thought the access request procedure was too complicated, one user was not eligible for access and one user needed another type of samples.

 

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Figure 2: Retrieval of the samples

 

In total 83% of the users found the samples they were looking for. Two SAR users could not find their samples because their requests were too specific. One BVTc user mentioned that at the moment of search in the catalogue few samples were available. Seventy-five % (n=6) of the BVTc users experienced the use of the catalogue user friendly, including one participant who had technical problems at the beginning. For the remaining participants (n=2), the use was considered to be 'ok'.

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Figure 3: Overview of the contact with the involved biobanks.

 

Seventy-two % of the users contacted the relevant biobanks (6 SAR users and 7 BVTc users), including 2 users who could not find their samples of interest. The reasons for not contacting the biobank were: 1) they will be contacted in the future, 2) they had enough samples via their own university biobank and 3) they found another way to conduct the research. In the end, 61% of all responders used biobanked samples. Of those who contacted biobanks, 77% used biobanked samples. BVTc users used more biobanked samples than SAR users.

 

Figure 4: Overview of the sample usage of the survey responders.

  

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