Building Research Support Capacity across Human Health Biobanks during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Human health biobanks are forms of research infrastructure that supply biospecimens and associated data to researchers, and therefore juxtapose the activities of clinical care and biomedical research. The discipline of biobanking has existed for over 20 years and is supported by several international professional societies and dedicated academic journals. However, despite both rising research demand for human biospecimens, and the growth of biobanking as an academic discipline, many individual biobanks continue to experience sustainability challenges. This commentary will summarize how the COVID-19 pandemic is creating new challenges and opportunities for both the health biobanking sector and the supporting discipline of biobanking. While the challenges for biobanks may be numerous and acute, there are opportunities for both individual biobanks and the discipline of biobanking to embrace change such that biobanks can continue to support and drive biomedical research. We will therefore describe numerous practical steps that individual biobanks and/or the discipline of biobanking can take to survive and possibly thrive in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords: COVID-19; biobanking; health biobank; infrastructure; research support; sustainability.

Figure 1.

Diagrammatic summary of the direct and indirect pressures that are being exerted on human health biobanking by the COVID-19 pandemic. Blue panels (at left) include factors that may reduce the supply of biobank resources, whereas orange panels (at right) include factors that may reduce the demand for biobank services. The triangle symbol represents changed activities, whereas downward arrows indicated reduced activities.

Figure 2.

Diagrammatic representation of the different elements of biobanking (shown as dark blue circles), and how these elements overlap with other research disciplines (shown as different colored circles or ovals). Where research disciplines overlap with more than two different elements of biobanking, these research disciplines are shown twice. Due to formatting limitations, not all possible discipline overlaps are shown.