Future Direction of Biobanking
Columns like this one is a great opportunity to share some thoughts with the biobanking community and get some feedback. This helps identifying those relevant to the biobankers and those that are not so relevant. Please continue to reach...
Cold Chain Best Laboratory Practices for Biobanking
I always understood that a biobank is not an investigation laboratory practice but rather an investigative support service. For this reason, process control is a requirement for any installations where biological samples are collected, processed, stored, and distributed. To have...
The Importance of Biobanking in Modern Medical Research
Biobanking is a term that refers to the practice of collecting human and animal biological samples-including blood, urine, bone marrow, saliva, spinal fluid, and tissue for research purposes in order to further our understanding of health and disease. A...
Biobanking Knowledge and Practical Skills Delivered Through E-learning-based Master’s Program
Article contributed by Gabriele Hartl, Christine Mitchell, Tanja Macheiner, Brigitte Jaksa, Berthold Huppertz and Karine Sargsyan, at Medical University of Graz.
Background
With the development of modern biobanks, the need for multidisciplinary and qualified personnel has increased. Working in such an environment...
Do We Need Biobankers at All?
No one can tell the number of biobanks worldwide. Several years ago, I was involved in a survey at a university center in Switzerland. We wanted to find out how many biobanks there were in this center. A biobank...
Speed is Important in Biobanking but the Promises Must be Kept
Hofstadter's Law is the observation that a process will always take longer than expected, even when Hofstadter's Law is taken into account. In other words, time estimates of how long something will take to accomplish will always fall short...
Challenges in Biobanking: Underutilization of Samples
When it comes to predictions, I agree with Nobel Prize winner Niels Bohr: "Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future”. Nevertheless, I dare to predict that there will be some consolidation in biobanks in the next...
The Anatomy of a Refrigeration Failure: What Happens at 2:00 a.m. When Mission Critical...
Article contributed by Chris Wilkes, chief commercial officer at KLATU Networks, Inc. Ultralow temperature (ULT) freezers often contain high-value biopharmaceuticals and/or irreplaceable research. When you leave at the end of the day or for the weekend, you need confidence that...
The Need for Patient-Pushed, Real-World Data on Neurodegenerative Diseases
Neurodegenerative diseases, is a collective term for a group of disorders characterized by the progressive neurodegeneration of brain cells, leading to dysfunction(s) and abnormal structure(s) in the central and/or peripheral nervous systems. One of the main causes of neurodegeneration...
Biobanks – A Platform for Modern Biomedical Research
Without biomedical research, medicine, as we know it, would be nothing more than a machine gun affair. In simpler words, biomedical research is the substratum that supports evidence-based medicine. Biomedical researchers study biological and pathological processes in order to...
