The Biobanking Research Infrastructure BBMRI-CZ as a Critical Tool to Enhance Translational Cancer Research
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| Year of publication | 2019 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
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| Description | The Czech national research biobanking infrastructure, BBMRI-CZ, was established at Masaryk Memorial Cancer Institute. Biobanks collect and store biological material from cancer patients for the long term that would be otherwise lost for future biomedical research. The constructed system of biobanks at BBMRI-CZ consists of two types of storage for patient samples – long-term storage (LTS) repository, and short-term storage (STS) repository. The LTS repository collects various types of tissues (tumour, metastases, non-tumour) classified by diagnosis, serum at surgery, genomic DNA and RNA. STS repository contains sera only and is iteratively updated at each patient visit to the hospital when the blood specimen is taken for the determination of tumour markers. The web-based tools BBMRI-ERIC Directory (https://directory.bbmri-eric.eu) and BBMRI-ERIC Negotiator (https://negotiator.bbmri-eric.eu/) are brand-new services that provide an efficient communication platform for biobankers and researchers. They substantially simplify the communication steps that are necessary to obtain information on the availability of relevant samples/data, particularly if the researchers need to communicate with multiple candidate biobanks. The unique design of storing not only the tissue material but also longitudinal strings of sera enables access to patient-derived material during the course of the complex patient treatment. Designed this way, the research Biobanks are becoming truly critical tools to enhance translational cancer research. |