Prof Jennifer Byrne

Director of Biobanking
NSW Health Statewide Biobank
NSW Health Pathology

Professor of Molecular Oncology
Faculty of Medicine and Health
University of Sydney

Professor Jennifer Byrne is Director of Biobanking with NSW Health Pathology and conjoint Professor of Molecular Oncology within the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Sydney.

Since 2019, Professor Byrne has also served as Editor-in-Chief of Biomarker Insights. Having undertaken her PhD in the genetics of childhood cancer at the University of Queensland, Professor Byrne has spent much of her scientific career analyzing childhood and adult cancers at the molecular level, and she was previously (Acting) Head of the Children’s Cancer Research Unit at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead from 2008-2019.

Her current research interests include improving the operations of human tissue banks, and the detection and analysis of incorrectly reported nucleotide sequence reagents in the biomedical research literature, where Professor Byrne was named as one of the journal Nature’s "10 people who mattered in 2017" for identifying and reporting numerous flawed cancer research papers.

Presentation Title

Biobank Support of Human Health and Biomedical Research - Facilitating Research Outcomes While Ensuring Regulatory Compliance

Human preclinical and translational research frequently relies upon quality human biospecimens and associated data that are obtained from human tissue banks or biobanks. While a biobank’s primary purpose is to enable and support research, Australian research that employs human biospecimens and data must also comply with both human research ethics and research governance regulations.

The New South Wales (NSW) Health Statewide Biobank first opened in 2017 as a facility to support a broad range of human health and biomedical research in NSW, Australia. Because the scope of the NSW Health Statewide Biobank extends beyond any single research discipline, the Biobank engages with many different research teams working within health, University and/or industry settings. As these research clients present with diverse research and regulatory needs and/or expectations, we will describe how the NSW Health Statewide Biobank is working towards maximising available research support while also meeting its compliance obligations.

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