Fiona Elsey Cancer Research Institute officially opened its upgraded tissue bank on Friday, a development feat Institute director George Kannourakis said was a great achievement amid a pandemic.

The tissue bank store a collection of human tissues, predominantly donated via Ballarat patient biopsies. Samples are stored as live cells in liquid nitrogen at minus-200C and used for research.

Professor Kannourakis said not many laboratories had easy access to tissue samples with immune cells and this was where the Ballarat team could thrive.

"We can't compete with big labs that have room for animal studies. The only way we can do our research is to look at patient samples coming in - that's our strength," Professor Kannourakis said.

"No sample is stored indefinitely. Our research is going on all the time. Our tissue bank is in a state of flux. We need to have enough samples to answer the biological questions our research is doing."

The tissue bank has been able to expand capacity for a further 4500 patient samples via a $200,000 boost from Bendigo Bank community branches in Buninyong, Creswick, Beaufort and Ballan and charitable trust grants.

Funding has also allowed the institute to create a more efficient lab lay-out with more than 23,000 tissue samples, with blood samples, housed in the tissue bank. This includes a sample from Fiona Elsey, the Ballarat teenager whose dream and hard work led to the creation of FECRI.

Sample donations have increased 52 per cent the past year with growing awareness of the institute in the region and the addition of new research projects, including a breast cancer program that launched earlier this year.

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Bendigo Bank's Stephen Falconer said the branches' focus was in long-term sustainability for their communities and FECRI's work aligned with that purpose.

"We were able to collaborate on a project with belief this is such an important regional facility and in time could also benefit Australia and the world," he said.

FECRI is internationally recognised for its work on cancer immunology with key projects including ovarian cancer, histiocytic disorders, bowel cancer, and blood disorders.

Healthy and cancerous tissue samples - identifiable only by a number, not patient name - allow researchers to identify proteins on cancer cells that develop a camouflaging 'fog' to evade immune cells. Researchers aim to lift this fog with antibodies to let the immune system do its work and, in turn, reducing the need for radiation and chemotherapy.

For details on tissue donation,to call FECRI: 5331 3101.

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