Members of the BCNet Advisory Committee are appointed by the Director of IARC, and membership will be for an initial period of two years. The General Assembly (meeting of all BCNet members and partners) will propose members for the new Advisory Committee, and the IARC Director will appoint these members.
The Chair and Vice Chair are elected by Advisory Committee members and will serve for a period of two years. Advisory Committee meetings will be chaired by the Chair or, in the case of the absence of the Chair, by the Vice Chair.
The role of the Advisory Committee will be as follows:
- To provide advice to the IARC Director in terms of the strategic development of BCNet activities and define IARC’s role as coordinator of BCNet
- To define the governance and operations of BCNet and its scope in terms of membership
- To identify potential partners, including other biobank networks, and what role they would play in the development of BCNet
- To identify short- and long-term goals for BCNet
- To identify and prioritize short- and long-term projects and work programmes that could be undertaken by BCNet partners
- To identify training needs and training programmes
- To identify potential grant opportunities
In addition, the Committee will:
- Advise on the future direction of BCNet
- Confirm the existence of an Ethical Review Committee (ERC) in its member institutions or, where an ERC is not available, obtain confirmation that the process of establishing an ERC has been initiated
- The ERC should be responsible for the review and approval of all aspects related to biobanking (sample collection and sharing, the use of informed consent forms, Material Transfer Agreement [MTA] for sample transfer, respect of participants’ privacy)
- Request information on the process of ethical clearance (obtain copy of ERC protocol and template of ERC Application Form)