Biospecimens, biobanking and global cancer research collaborations

Abstract

The disparities in prostate cancer incidence and mortality continue to be a global public health problem. Efforts to address the prostate cancer disparity in black men have been met with a number of challenges, specifically in the accessibility to biospecimens in the context of global prostate cancer collaborations. During the International Educational Workshop at the Science of Global Prostate Cancer Disparities conference held 1-4 November 2012 in Nassau, the Bahamas, an overview of biobanking and biospecimen repositories, and materials transfer in global prostate cancer collaborations were discussed. The challenges faced by low-resource countries were identified, and potential solutions were recommended.

Keywords: biobanking; biorepositories; biospecimens; global cancer research.

Figure 1.. An overview of biobanking. Biobanks need solid planning and require IRB approvals, informed consent from participants, and a study protocol prior to the collection of biospecimens. These samples will be processed by annotation and labeling. Then, clinicopathological and epidemiological data will be recorded while the samples are stored appropriately. For analysis, samples will be released after checking conflict of interest (COI), and establishing a material transfer agreement (MTA) between institutes. Intellectual property issues need to be agreed upon before the results from analyses are reported.