Biobanks in personalized medicine

Introduction: Human biological samples like tissues, cells, blood, and other body fluids including associated information on the sample donor/patient are a key resource for research toward identifying determinants and mechanisms of individual diseases. Biobanks collect, preserve, and provide access to this resource in a transparent and quality controlled manner in compliance with ethical, legal, and regulatory requirements. Areas covered: Precision medicine research requires access to sufficient numbers of samples and data that properly cover the broad spectrum of disease sub-entities relevant for targeted therapies. To address this demand samples and data from different biobanks in different countries must be suitable for integrated analyses. This is only possible if samples and data meet common quality criteria. Therefore international standards (e.g. CEN Technical Specifications or ISO Standards) have to be implemented for sample pre-analytics, covering all steps from sample collection from the patient to isolation of biomolecules. Furthermore, data management becomes increasingly important because samples have to be linked with detailed descriptions of disease phenotypes and re-use of data generated from samples by omics technologies has to be supported. Expert commentary: Data and quality management become increasingly important, and biobanks will develop from a sample provider to a data and knowledge provider.