Expert Advisors

Canadian Tissue Repository Network Management

CTRNet is a translational cancer research resource, funded by Canadian Institutes of Health Research, that furthers Canadian health research by linking cancer researchers with provincial tumour banks.

Candace Carter


New South Wales Health Statewide Biobank Operations Manager Candace oversees the quality, cost and operational integrity of the biobank, as well as compliance, accreditation, HR, business & resource management. Candace has over 15 years of experience in biobanking and clinical research and has managed national and international investigator initiated and pharmaceutical supported studies at the NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre and the National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research. Prior to joining the biobank, Candace was a valued member of the BBRS team and was also employed at the NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre, University of Sydney, to scope, seek funding and set up oncology clinical trials.

Jane Carpenter


Jane Carpenter has many years' experience working in diagnostic laboratories in the UK and Australia specialising in haematology. She made the move into tissue banking in 2003 being employed by the paediatric tumour bank at Westmead Children's Hospital. From 2006-2015 she was the manager of the Australian Breast Cancer Tissue Bank (ABCTB), headquartered in the Westmead Millennium Institute in NSW. From 2015-2018 she worked for NSW Health Pathology, establishing a standardised Biobanking framework for the state which culminated in the commissioning and opening of the NSW Statewide Biobank and included the introduction of a certification program for Biobanks. She has significant experience in many aspects of tissue banking both at a practical and managerial level.

She is currently a Program Manager with the Faculty of Medicine and Health at Sydney University and Biobanking Advisor for the Westmead Institute for Medical Research.

Jane is a member of the Australasian Biospecimen Network Association and has served on the Management Committee and as Vice President. She was elected to the ISBER Council in 2011 and sat on the ISBER Board for 6 years, she has also been a member of the ISBER Education and Training committee, Governance committee, Program committee and Standards committee. Jane was the co-chair of the ISBER Program Committee for the 2013 Annual Meeting held in Sydney.

Jane has been involved in realising educational opportunities and a career structure for tissue banking personnel and part of a working group to prepare and design an educational programme leading to a formal qualification in Tissue Banking for technical staff. Jane is also a member of the Marble Arch International Working Group on Biobanking, and a Board member of the Asian Network of Research Resource Centres.

Dr. William Grizzle


Dr. Grizzle is a researcher with his major focus in translational research on squamous cell carcinomas, adenocarcinomas and neuroendocrine tumors. He is board certified in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology and is Professor of Pathology at the University of Alabama Birmingham (UAB). For the last three decades, Dr. Grizzle, via the Tissue Collection and Banking Facility (TCBF) at UAB, has provided human tissues to support the research of biomedical investigators throughout North America.

The TCBF includes the Southern Division of the Cooperative Human Tissue Network (CHTN). In 1985, he introduced to tissue resources the utilization of histopathological quality control of tissue aliquots actually provided for research and he has been involved in the development of standards and operational issues for biorepositories including database development. In this regard, he was a founding member of the International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories (ISBER) and is past president of ISBER and has worked on all editions of ISBER Best Practices.

He is a trustee of the Biological Stain Commission (BSC) and past vice president and past president of the BSC. The BSC is an organization which certifies biological stains and provides education and support as to factors such as tissue preparation, which affect histochemical and immunohistochemical staining and other molecular assays. He has great expertise in Biorepository Sciences including how fixation of tissues interacts with the stages of tissue processing to affect immunorecognition and other molecular assays.

Dr. Richard Hegele


Dr. Hegele is Co-Chair of the Research Committee of the Toronto Academic Health Science Network (TAHSNr), Vice Dean of Research & Innovation at the University of Toronto, and past Chief of the Department of Paediatric Laboratory Medicine at The Hospital for Sick Children. His current research focuses on understanding how respiratory viruses bind and enter into cells to initiate infection, kinetics of viral replication within infected cells, and modulating virus-host interactions.

He was one of the founding members of the BC BioLibrary and has been involved from the outset with the biobank certification and education program.

Dr. Sara Nußbeck


Head of the Biobank of the University Medical Center Göttingen (UMG) After studying in Rheinbach and Aberdeen, Sara completed a doctorate in cellular and molecular immunology in Göttingen. This was followed by research in the field of data management for biomedical research at the Institute for Medical Informatics in Göttingen. She became the head of the UMG Biobank in 2015. She was also a member of the ISBER Education and Training Committee. Since May 2017 she has been the head of the "Education and Training" working group for biobank German Biobank Network.

Dr. Bruce Ritchie


Bruce Ritchie is an Associate Professor of Haematology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, where he is active in both clinical and basic research. His clinical interests include bleeding disorders, thrombotic disorders, primary immunodeficiency, hereditary angioedema, hemoglobinopathies, porphyria and blood borne pathogens.

He has developed specialty clinics in Edmonton to provide comprehensive care including home treatment with blood products to these groups. He is intimately involved in surveillance of the blood system in Canada; he chairs the committee which oversees the Canadian Haemophilia Assessment and Resource Management information System (CHARMS), a national program to track blood clotting products used in patient homes.

He is principal Investigator of the Blood Borne Pathogens Project and has built a medium size biobank as a proof of concept for a larger automated biobank. He runs a dozen clinical research projects in addition to the Blood Borne Pathogens Surveillance project, including regulatory trials for the pharmaceutical industry, and investigator initiated trials. His research laboratory works on tissue archiving, genomic discovery, cryopreservation, use of ink jet printers to print biomaterials and cells and development of technical fixes to increase throughput in the biobank. He was on the Governance oversight committee of the BC BioLibrary and is the main driver behind the Canadian Biosample Repository in Edmonton Alberta; this facility provides efficient and robust biosample processing, management, storage and retrieval infrastructure.

Katherine Sexton


Katherine C. Sexton received her undergraduate degree from Samford University and a Master's Degree in Business Administration from The University of Alabama at Birmingham. She has served as the Assistant Director of the UAB Tissue Collection and Banking Facility since 1983 and as the Coordinator for the Southern Division of the Cooperative Human Tissue Network since 1987. Ms. Sexton also manages the operations of the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center Tissue Procurement Shared Facility, the UAB Breast SPORE Biorepository, the UAB Pancreatic SPORE Biorepository, and the Center for Tissue Processing for the Pulmonary Hypertension Breakthrough Initiative (PHBI).

Ms. Sexton was one of the founding members of the International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories (ISBER), and has served on the ISBER Council, the Program Committee, Strategic Planning Committee, and currently serves as the Chair of the ISBER Education and Training Committee. She received the ISBER Special Service Award in 2008, 2009 and 2011. Ms. Sexton and Dr. William Grizzle have been leading workshops on tissue biorepository design and operations since 1993.

Dr. Jim Vaught


Dr. Jim Vaught spent 14 years (1999-2013) at the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI), most recently as the Chief of the Biorepositories and Biospecimen Research Branch (BBRB) in the Cancer Diagnosis Program. He has been working in the field of biorepository and biospecimen science for over 20 years. In 1999, he was one of the founding members of the International Society for Biological & Environmental Repositories (ISBER) and was its second President. He serves as vice chair of the ISBER Publications Committee and co-chair of the International Resource Locator Working Group.

He serves on a number of biobank advisory groups including the Telethon-Italy Genetic Biobank Network; the Stellenbosch University (Cape Town) H3-Africa Governance Advisory Panel; and the Biobanques Network (France) Scientific Board.

In addition to ISBER, Dr. Vaught is a member of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, the European Society for Biopreservation & Biobanking and the American Association for Clinical Chemistry.

He is the author of nearly 70 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. From 2006 to 2012 he was Senior Editor for Biospecimens and Biorepositories for the AACR journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention. In 2012, he became Editor-in-Chief of Biopreservation and Biobanking, the official journal of ISBER. He is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the International Prevention Research Institute (Lyon).

Dr. Nik Zeps


Dr. Zeps is a PhD scientist involved in translational research in breast, gastrointestinal and gynecological malignancies. He is Group Director of Research for Epworth HealthCare, and is the former Director of Research and head of a translational research program at St John of God HealthCare (SJOGHC), which is integrated into clinical care. This work has included establishing a research biobank, a molecular diagnostic service and the provision of laboratory services for clinical trials for a large private metropolitan hospital.

He is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Surgery at the University of Western Australia and at Notre Dame Medical School. He is a member of Research Committee of the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) of Australia. He has been involved in human research ethics since 2002 as a member of a Human Research Ethics Committee and in the Harmonisation of Multicentre Ethical Review processes at a national level. He was a member of the Australian Health Ethics Committee from 2006-2012. He is chair of the Biobank working group for the Global Summit of National Ethics Committees operated by the World Health Organisation.

He is the chair of the Cancer Biology Group of the Clinical Oncology Society of Australia and the Biological sub-committee of the Australasian Gastro-intestinal Trials Group and a member of the Research and Data Advisory Committee of Cancer Australia. He is the Australian representative on the Ethics and Policy Committee of the International Cancer Genome Consortium and a founding member of the Australasian Biospecimen Network. He is past co-chair of the Science Policy Committee of the International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories (ISBER).