Biobank resources for future patient care: developments, principles and concepts

Abstract

The aim of the overview is to give a perspective of global biobank development is given in a view of positioning biobanking as a key resource for healthcare to identify new potential markers that can be used in patient diagnosis and complement the targeted personalized drug treatment. The fast progression of biobanks around the world is becoming an important resource for society where the patient benefit is in the focus, with a high degree of personal integrity and ethical standard. Biobanks are providing patient benefits by large scale screening studies, generating large database repositories. It is envisioned by all participating stakeholders that the biobank initiatives will become the future gateway to discover new frontiers within life science and patient care. There is a great importance of biobank establishment globally, as biobanks has been identified as a key area for development in order to speed up the discovery and development of new drugs and protein biomarker diagnostics. One of the major objectives in Europe is to establish concerted actions, where biobank networks are being developed in order to combine and have the opportunity to share and build new science and understanding from complex disease biology. These networks are currently building bridges to facilitate the establishments of best practice and standardizations.

Figure 1

Biobank structure with its links to the health care area.

Figure 2

Illustration of the analytical technologies targeting the broadest range of biomolecules utilizing biobanking materials.

Figure 3

1D bar code and 2D barcode system, Databases, data repository and laboratory intelligent management systems.

Figure 4

Comparative quantitation of three PSA isoforms (access codes: P017288, Q15096 and Q8IXI4) by MRM assay. Blue and red parts of the sequences represent identical and isoform specific tryptic peptides, respectively.

Figure 5

Analysis of a surface marker on two different cell lines by flow cytometry. Histograms showing unlabelled control cells (solid gray area) and fluorescently labeled cells with a surface marker (solid black area). A) showing a clear positive expression and B) no expression of the surface marker.

Figure 6

Comparison of histograms. (A) Histogram from an ovarian diploid cancer: Red population: Flow cytometric DNA index: 1.00, S phase fraction: 1.5%. (B) Histogram from an ovarian non-diploid cancer: Yellow population: Flow cytometric DNA index: 1.47, S phase fraction: 11.9%. Red population corresponds to the contribution of DNA diploid (DNA index: 1.00) cells in the tissue sample.