All patients provided written informed consent for participation in the study and donation of samples.
Most of all, thanks to all patients and healthy volunteers for their selfless donation of samples used in this study.
The policies for collection and use of blood samples were approved by the institutional review board of the IRCCS Policlinico S. Matteo Foundation, and all patients gave written consent for the donation of samples.
This is contrary to the concept of donation of samples in the context of research.
There is little research collaboration for data access or data sharing, as public distrust of expert authorities has been an obstacle to individual donation of samples to researchers and doctors [ 35].
Access is important not only for those who directly participated in the research in question through donation of samples, but also for the population as a whole; innovations of genomics research should be available to those who need them, not only the privileged few.
Donations of CLL samples to CRC require the written consent of the patients in compliance with the Declaration of Helsinki.
The authors thank all individuals who assisted us in the collection and identification of the specimens studied here, with special thanks to Dr. Mauro Nirchio, Universidad de Oriente; Hernan Ortega, Museo de Historia Natural, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos; and Dr. Oris Sanjur, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute for donations of tissue samples and help with a collection expedition.
The authors would like to thank Dr. Natalia de Leon (University of Wisconsin, Madison) for generously providing corn stover samples, Dr. Farzaneh Teymouri at the Michigan Biotechnology Institute for the donation of switchgrass samples, and Dr. John Ralph (University of Wisconsin, Madison) for synthesizing thioacidolysis standards.
All studies involving human samples were approved by local Ethical Review Panels and all patients gave an informed consent for donation of blood samples.
