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Review
. 2020 Oct 19:15:1177271920965522.
doi: 10.1177/1177271920965522. eCollection 2020.

Biobanking for Cancer Biomarker Research: Issues and Solutions

Lise A Matzke  1   2 , Peter H Watson  1   2   3
Affiliations
Review

Biobanking for Cancer Biomarker Research: Issues and Solutions

Lise A Matzke et al. Biomark Insights. .

Abstract

Biomarkers are critical tools that underpin precision medicine. However there has been slow progress and frequent failure of biomarker development. The root causes are multifactorial. Here, we focus on the need for fast, efficient, and reliable access to quality biospecimens as a critical area that impacts biomarker development. We discuss the past history of biobanking and the evolution of biobanking processes relevant to the specific area of cancer biomarker development as an example, and describe some solutions that can improve this area, thus potentially accelerating biomarker research.

Keywords: Biobank; biobanking; biomarkers; biospecimen quality.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of conflicting interests:The author(s) declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Biobank collection profile. Graph showing biobank collection profile over time. The graph shows the decline in the proportion of all incident breast cancer cases from which a frozen sample for research was collected by a provincial tumor biobank in Canada over a 10-year period.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Biospecimen pathways. Diagram showing typical biospecimen pathways from patient to research laboratory in 2010s (upper panel) and 2020’s (lower panel). Biospecimens are obtained direct from the patient or through the pathology laboratory with or without a biobank intermediary. With an increase of need for clinical biospecimens to drive biomarkers research, there is an increased appetite for biospecimens from clinical pathology departments and clinical laboratories, such as FFPE blocks and clinical blood samples respectively.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Research & pathology perspectives on the process of access to clinical archival FFPE blocks.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Canadian Tissue Repository Network (CTRNet) Pathology Research Support Certificate Program.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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