TLV BioBank

The Institutional Biobank

About Us
TLV BioBank  is a hospital-based biomedical resource dedicated to collecting and storing biological samples alongside de-identified clinical, pathological, and demographic information from patients treated at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center. Our biobank provides researchers from academia and industry access to high-quality biospecimens, supporting studies aimed at improving the understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of diverse medical conditions.

Available Samples

Our biobank team collects a variety of human biospecimens, either retrospectively or prospectively, depending on the study design and clinical setting.

  • Body fluids: blood, bone marrow aspirates, synovial fluid and other clinically obtained fluids
  • Tissue samples: tumor and adjacent non-tumor tissue, including FFPE (formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded)
  • Other sample types: stool, saliva, additional materials collected according to specific protocols

Samples are collected from patients with a range of medical conditions, including malignant and benign tumors, rheumatologic diseases, and other clinical backgrounds. The biobank also includes samples from healthy donors without a specific diagnosis, collected during clinical care.

Access and Collaboration

Researchers from within the hospital, external academic institutions, and the life sciences industry are welcome to request access to the biobank’s resources.

Ethical approval from the Institutional Helsinki Committee (IRB) is required in order to use samples and associated data for research purposes. In such applications, researchers may request for exemption from seeking re-consent, as all donors have already signed the biobank’s informed consent form.

We are available to assist in assessing feasibility and guiding researchers through the request process.

Information & Resources

  1. Patient Recruitment – The BioBank team recruits sample donors in pre-op clinics and during follow-up examinations at Ichilov Hospital.
  2. Informed Consent – BioBank research coordinators review informed consent form with each patient, explaining the overall purpose of the BioBank, how samples are collected, and how samples impact medical research.
  3. Sample Collection – On the day of the operational procedure, the BioBank team collects and transfers tissue samples to the Institute of Pathology where remaining tissue not needed for diagnosis is considered for storage.
  4. Sample Preservation – BioBank samples are stored for 25 years in liquid nitrogen freezers.

Yes. The Biobank team can provide prospective collection of fresh tissues and blood samples for research.

Highlight Publications

Breast cancer is detectable from peripheral blood using machine learning over T cell receptor repertoires
Zuckerbrot-Schuldenfrei, M., Raphael, A., Zilberberg, A. et al.
npj Syst Biol Appl 11, 89 (2025). 

Neutrophil extracellular traps are associated with poor response to neoadjuvant therapy and poor survival in pediatric osteosarcoma
Baron S, Binenbaum Y, Maman R, Fidel V, Shusterman A, Vaisman D, Sher O, Manisterski M, Shukrun R, Rössig C, Elhasid R.
Front Oncol. 2025 Mar 19;15:1472716. doi: 10.3389/fonc.2025.1472716. PMID: 40177239; PMCID: PMC11961948.

The compositional behavior of the human T cell receptor repertoire in ovarian cancer compared to healthy donors
Zuckerbrot-Schuldenfrei, M., Zilberberg, A. & Efroni, S.
Sci Data 12, 175 (2025).

Ovarian cancer is detectable from peripheral blood using machine learning over T-cell receptor repertoires
Miriam Zuckerbrot-Schuldenfrei, Sarit Aviel-Ronen, Alona Zilberberg, Sol Efroni.
Briefings in Bioinformatics, Volume 25, Issue 2, March 2024, bbae075.

Association of a Third Dose of BNT162b2 Vaccine With Incidence of SARS-CoV-2 Infection Among Health Care Workers in Israel
Spitzer A, Angel Y, Marudi O, et al.
JAMA. 2022;327(4):341–349.

Extracellular Vesicle-Derived DNA vs. CfDNA as a Biomarker for the Detection of Colon Cancer
Thakur K, Singh MS, Feldstein-Davydova S, Hannes V, Hershkovitz D, Tsuriel S.
Genes. 2021; 12(8):1171.

Patient-derived Tumor Spheroid Cultures as a Promising Tool to Assist Personalized Therapeutic Decisions
Hofmann S, Cohen-Harazi R, Maizels Y, Koman I.
BioRxiv. 2021 Jan 1;2021.06.26.450027

The human tumor microbiome is composed of tumor type–specific intracellular bacteria
Nejman D, Livyatan I, Fuks G, Gavert N, Zwang Y, Geller LT, Rotter-Maskowitz A, Weiser R, Mallel G, Gigi E, Meltser A, Douglas GM, Kamer I, Gopalakrishnan V, Dadosh T, Levin-Zaidman S, Avnet S, Atlan T, Cooper ZA, Arora R, Cogdill AP, Khan MAW, Ologun G, Bussi Y, Weinberger A, Lotan-Pompan M, Golani O, Perry G, Rokah M, Bahar-Shany K, Rozeman EA, Blank CU, Ronai A, Shaoul R, Amit A, Dorfman T, Kremer R, Cohen ZR, Harnof S, Siegal T, Yehuda-Shnaidman E, Gal-Yam EN, Shapira H, Baldini N, Langille MGI, Ben-Nun A, Kaufman B, Nissan A, Golan T, Dadiani M, Levanon K, Bar J, Yust-Katz S, Barshack I, Peeper DS, Raz DJ, Segal E, Wargo JA, Sandbank J, Shental N, Straussman R.
Science. 2020 May 29;368(6494):973-980.

Personalized Ubiquitination Signatures for Predicting Response to Proteasome Inhibitor-Based Therapy of MM Patients
Tsubery H, Lerman G, Kronenfeld G, Sela I, Merbl Y, Itzhaki-Alfia A, Trestman S, C Cohen Y, Avivi I
Blood. 2019 Nov; 134 (Supplement_1): 3371.

Proinflammatory macrophages promote multiple myeloma resistance to bortezomib therapy
Beyar-Katz O, Magidey K, Reiner-Benaim A, Barak N, Avivi I, Cohen Y, Timaner M, Avraham S, Hayun M, Lavi N, Bersudsky M, Voronov E, Apte RN, Shaked Y.
Mol Cancer Res. 2019 Nov;17(11):2331-2340

Contact TLV BioBank

The fields marked with * are mandatory fields
Thank you for contacting us. Your message has been sent successfully. We will get back to you shortly.
There was an error and your form was not submitted. Please try again later.