The rate at which biobanks are evolving is increasing, facilitating the research of immense stores of human biological material as well as nonhuman materials, including plants, animals, and microorganisms. The further development of different biobanks and their sharing capabilities may revolutionize research, paving the way for personalized treatment and other advances.
If you’re wondering what is biobanking, it’s the collection and storage of blood and tissue samples for research use. It has grown into an indispensable resource in modern medical research, supporting several kinds of scientific research such as genome-wide studies and personalized medicine.
The example biobanking record details are height, weight, and inquiries about health samples like a person’s family history and lifestyle. The samples are often kept for extended periods of time and/or forever to support future long-term research studies. However, researchers may keep tabs on the participants’ health by looking at their medical data from the past and future.
Biobanking is advancing science and technology by means of providing innovative resources such as the following:
Table of Contents
1. Biobanking Can Improve The Replication Of Experiments And Results
Biobanking is incredibly important when it comes to scientific research. In a recent study, it was found that globally, the level of scientific reproducibility is remarkably low. More than 70% of the 1,500 scientists who took part in the trial could not duplicate tests conducted by other scientists. One-half of those who tried couldn’t repeat their own findings.
The entire situation is quite expensive. In the United States alone, each year, a staggering USD$28 billion is wasted due to life science research that cannot be reproduced. Because of this, it’s a must for scientists to enhance their capacity to replicate their tests and results, a process known as reproducibility. This is crucial because it verifies study results and enables others to rely on those results.
Biobanks are well-controlled environments with sound quality assurance that make them safe and dependable spaces to store biological material for further testing, which may lead to trustworthy scientific discoveries that could save lives.
2. Biobanking For Personalized Medicine
Biobanking in medicine plays a crucial role in the advancement of personalized medicine. According to those who study human science, the increased use of personalized medicine and the creation of new medicines would help the health of humanity. Thus, ensuring that biobanks have high-quality biospecimens is essential for promoting future research into biomedical and translational studies.
In fact, biobanks are believed to promote human health and the community’s welfare, which is one of its ultimate goals. Early diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of illnesses that are linked to certain medical problems such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and neurological disease all require the use of biomarkers.
3. Biobanking Increases Accuracy In Pharmaceutical Studies
In pharmaceutical studies, accuracy is one of the most important aspects. Traditionally, biobanks obtain, store, analyze, and destroy samples of DNA from people and animals. Those are referred to as human and animal DNA registries.
Moreover, a panel of specialists from the International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories (ISBER) shed light on biobanking research and its role in providing contemporary and precise medicine.
Biobanking is rapidly being recognized as a scientific activity necessary for precision medicine breakthroughs and resulting in novel therapies. In other words, biobanking covers the many steps needed to gather biological samples (blood, tissue, or bodily fluid) and related data in order to further people’s knowledge of health and illness.
4. Biobanking For Data Management Solutions
Biobanks now face new complexities resulting from an ever-increasing supply of complex data coming from a large variety of biospecimens. As with most complex networks, researchers and collaborators throughout the network need to be able to find and get relevant biospecimens from different and sometimes large databases. Incorporating cloud-based laboratory information management systems (LIMS) will enable biospecimen-based biobanks to better store, analyze, and exchange their specimens, creating a better environment for these organizations to pursue linked objectives.
Among the tech trends in medicine and health care, cloud-based technology allows biobanks to expand rapidly in response to demand while simultaneously ensuring that all relevant data are consolidated into one location. This level of traceability aids in keeping track of previous analyses, which makes it simple to keep tabs on previously processed samples.
5. Virtual Biobanks Make Locating Biospecimens From Multiple Biobanks Possible
Biobanks that are developed across the world include those in Sweden, Denmark, Latvia, Iceland, the United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore, Canada, South Korea, and the United States. In order to gather, evaluate, and preserve phenotypic and genomic information on representative samples of their source populations, these large-scale repositories have been established.
Researchers’ demands, as well as external regulatory and associated constraints, have influenced the area of biorepository and biospecimen science throughout time. Part of the reason our world is constantly changing is because of new scientific fields like proteomics, genomics, and customized medicine that have emerged as well as the greater accuracy of related fields of science.
The number of people interested in buying specimens with accurate, consistent, standardized clinical and laboratory data has grown over time since this procedure has become more common. Thus, a multiplicity of research will only succeed with the optimal collection, processing, storage, tracking, and shipping of biospecimens.
With that said, biological biobanks are established to enable researchers to search for relevant biospecimens for testing and data mining from a number of biological biobanks scattered throughout the world. Specialized software or online portals are intended to link biobanks all around the globe and make virtual biobanks accessible.
Conclusion
Biobanking contributes to science and technology by providing valuable resources required in research. Without it, numerous studies can’t be carried out by experts and other members of the scientific community. It leads to new discoveries, new knowledge, and new insights that ultimately result in the advancement of the industries using and benefiting from it.
Although it has the potential to be the most powerful single platform for health innovation and knowledge creation if it’s supported well, it may also end up being a colossal failure due to insufficient funding and poor networking. Overcoming the worldwide-held negative views of biobanks and moving beyond outdated ideas on how biobanking should be done will be essential in biobanking’s global transition. More robust, targeted, and affordable studies depend on harmonization among biobanks all around the world.
