tiss.EU

The acronym Tiss.EU stands for "Evaluation of Legislation and Related Guidelines on the Procurement, Storage and Transfer of Human Tissues and Cells in the European Union - an Evidence-Based Impact Analysis." The project, funded by the European Commission as part of the 7th Framework Programme, runs from February 2008 to early 2011 and will address questions of ethical and legal regulation in relation to research using human tissue. The project is coordinated by Dr. Christian Lenk and Prof. Dr. Claudia Wiesemann (Dept. for Ethics and History of Medicine, University of Goettingen) in cooperation with Nils Hoppe (Medical Law and Bioethics Group, University of Hannover).

Tiss.EU is made up of four parts, the ethical and legal aspects of which are going to be looked at by the project partners:

Procurement, storage and transfer of tissue and cells for research;
Rights and entitlements to tissue and cells;
Anonymisation and pseudonymisation to protect privacy rights;
Research using biobanks.

The project's aim is to assess the impact made by European Union's regulatory activities to date on research in the member states (plus Switzerland). To this end, the project will accumulate and compare national legislative instruments and guidelines with the help of external experts and make these data available to the public. As a culmination of the project, recommendations are to be drafted for possible ethical and legal guidelines in the interests of European-wide convergence and harmonisation.

Tiss.EU is made up of ten European partner institutions in nine different countries:

Dept. for Ethics and History of Medicine, University of Goettingen, Germany - Coordinator.
Medical Law and Bioethics Group at the Center for Philosophy and Ethics of Science, University of Hannover, Germany.
Centre for the Study of Global Ethics, University of Birmingham, UK.
Stockholm Bioethics Centre, University of Stockholm, Sweden.
Center for Ethics and Law in Biomedicine, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary.
Fondazione Lanza, Padua, Italy.
Forensic & Legal Medicine, School of Medicine and Medical Science, National University of Ireland, UCD, Dublin, Republic of Ireland.
Centre de Recherche Droit, Sciences et Techniques, Universite Paris 1 - Sorbonne, France.
Institute of Bio-Law "Legal Pathways", Aerdenhout, The Netherlands.
Dept. of Medical History and Ethics, University of Vilnius, Lithuania.

Tiss.EU's work is guided by its external advisory board, comprising of renowned academics and scientists active in the fields of medical ethics and medical law: Prof. Nikola Biller-Andorno (Zurich), Prof. Donna Dickenson (London), Prof. Hille Haker (Frankfurt), Prof. Ruud ter Meulen (Bristol), Prof. Stefano Rodota (Rome), Prof. Jürgen Simon (Lueneburg) and Prof. Jochen Taupitz (Mannheim).