Welcome to the Future of Biobanking

With apologies to the locomotive, the computer chip and the wheel, no single innovation alone can accelerate science and technology. What we call groundbreaking is more often a culmination of incremental advancements, a slow drip that eventually becomes a torrent. But even a torrent must be enabled by something else – it cannot flow without unseen forces and infrastructure.

As we consider multiple torrents unleashed by the decoding of the human genome, for example – from population genetics studies to proteomics, it’s impossible to imagine any of this without modern biobanking. Samples, and the data they contain, are so valuable to discovery yet we often forget what it takes to prepare, store, retrieve, analyze, share and re-store these valuable assets.

So what’s the best way to celebrate the role that biobanks play in accelerating science? We must look as much at what is being enabled as how. And we must spotlight the entire ecosystem, from the people who build and staff biobanks to the scientists around the world who rely on the secure, ethical and efficient storage of tomorrow’s breakthroughs. 

We want this blog to celebrate all that biobanking enables by shining a light on the ecosystem that surrounds it. Hopefully we’ll spark dialogue around the issues that matter most to research scientists while shedding light on how better processes, tools, services, networking, collaboration and, yes, regulation can lead to more rapid drug discovery, advanced diagnosis and better patient outcomes.

Please join us – and actively participate – as we explore today’s rapidly changing biobanking ecosystem.