The Molecular Oncology department hosts the breast cancer tumour tissue repository (BREAST-TTR), a project within the agency-wide tumour tissue repository. The BREAST-TTR comprises several important banks of breast tissues, contemporaneous as well as archival. The main banks are:

3000 frozen breast cancers, linked to 15 year outcomes data from the BCCA Breast Cancer Outcomes Unit. This archival bank consists of frozen tissue, DNA and RNA, and a tissue microarray of the cases.

Live-cryopreserved cancers. At present around 50 individual cases of metastatic breast cancer, with tumour material cryopreserved for subsequent cell culture/xenograft work.

Comptemporary bank. Between the TTR in Victoria and the accrual site in Vancouver, approximately 1300 contemporaneous (within last 4 years) breast cancers with matched normal DNA and outcomes linkages.