# A common consent and material transfer template for tumour biobanks

Source: https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-data-common-biobank-consent-mta/  
OnCo record `idea-data-common-biobank-consent-mta` (Idea). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Every biobank negotiates its own legal agreement for sharing tissue, which takes months. A shared standard template, like Creative Commons for samples, would let tissue and data move in days.

## Summary

Material transfer agreements are negotiated bespoke; consent forms differ; the result is that tumour samples rarely leave the institution that collected them. A common consent text recognised by ethics committees and a standard tiered MTA (academic, commercial, with fixed benefit-sharing terms) would remove most negotiation. Precedents include the Uniform Biological Material Transfer Agreement (UBMTA) and the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health consent toolkit.

## Fields

- Kind: Idea
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Hypothesis: Adoption of a common template by more than 50 biobanks will cut median time to sample transfer from over six months to under one and increase the number of samples used in multi-centre studies.
- Rationale: Standard licences (Creative Commons, open-source software licences) removed negotiation costs and created ecosystems; biobanking has the templates but not the adoption push.
- Proposed test: Get ten biobanks and their legal offices to adopt the template; track transfer time and volume for 18 months against the previous period.
- Maturity: speculative
- Actor: research

## Sources

- GA4GH: https://www.ga4gh.org/

## Connected records

- fronts: [AI & Computation](https://onco.cc/fronts/ai-computation/)
- bottlenecks: [Data silos](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-data-silos/), [Secrecy and intellectual property block collaboration](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-ip-collaboration/)

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