Implementation of legal mechanisms of environmental protection by the South Pacific regional organizations

Objective of the article is to present a multitude of the South Pacific regional organizations, whose one of the most vital issue is to implement legal mechanisms of environmental protection. As the Pacific countries and territories are the most affected by the climate change effects, the goal of the politicians, diplomats, representatives of private sector and civil society organizations is to protect their islands. The islanders have been trying to achieve that through multilateral gathering, seminars and other so-called soft law instruments, but also, recently, through hard law mechanism, which can be de iure executed. There are however many obstacles which come from both structural and social barriers of the South Pacific nations. The methodology, which has been used to write this article, is the legal analysis of the documents made on both national and transnational lever, mainly by the regional intergovernmental organizations, as well as non-binding communiqués after summits and further political declarations. The value author wishes to bring is first of all publicising the Pacific region, as it is not anymore isolated or dependent on the bigger global actors. Secondly, environmental protection made by the grass roots initiatives, being de facto the regional organizations, can shed new light on this matter. Conclusion shall, nonetheless, present still a long way before the South Pacific microstates on their way to achieving both better regional cooperation, as well as mechanisms of more effective implementation of the regional norms

Comprehensive cancer-oriented biobanking resource of human samples for studies of post-zygotic genetic variation involved in cancer predisposition

The progress in translational cancer research relies on access to well-characterized samples from a representative number of patients and controls. The rationale behind our biobanking are explorations of post-zygotic pathogenic gene variants, especially in non-tumoral tissue, which might predispose to cancers. The targeted diagnoses are carcinomas of the breast (via mastectomy or breast conserving surgery), colon and rectum, prostate, and urinary bladder (via cystectomy or transurethral resection), exocrine pancreatic carcinoma as well as metastases of colorectal cancer to the liver. The choice was based on the high incidence of these cancers and/or frequent fatal outcome. We also collect age-matched normal controls. Our still ongoing collection originates from five clinical centers and after nearly 2-year cooperation reached 1711 patients and controls, yielding a total of 23226 independent samples, with an average of 74 donors and 1010 samples collected per month. The predominant diagnosis is breast carcinoma, with 933 donors, followed by colorectal carcinoma (383 donors), prostate carcinoma (221 donors), bladder carcinoma (81 donors), exocrine pancreatic carcinoma (15 donors) and metachronous colorectal cancer metastases to liver (14 donors). Forty percent of the total sample count originates from macroscopically healthy cancer-neighboring tissue, while contribution from tumors is 12%, which adds to the uniqueness of our collection for cancer predisposition studies. Moreover, we developed two program packages, enabling registration of patients, clinical data and samples at the participating hospitals as well as the central system of sample/data management at coordinating center. The approach used by us may serve as a model for dispersed biobanking from multiple satellite hospitals. Our biobanking resource ought to stimulate research into genetic mechanisms underlying the development of common cancers. It will allow all available "-omics" approaches on DNA-, RNA-, protein- and tissue levels to be applied. The collected samples can be made available to other research groups