The future of biobanking: A conceptual look at how biobanks can respond to the growing human biospecimen needs of researchers

Biobanking of human biological specimens has evolved from the simple private collection of often poorly annotated residual clinical specimens, to well annotated and organized collections setup by commercial and not-for-profit organizations. The activities of biobanks is now the focus of international and government agencies in recognition of the need to adopt best practices and provide scientific, ethical and legal guidelines for the industry. The demand for more, high quality and clinically annotated biospecimens will increase, primarily due to the unprecedented level of genomic, post genomic and personalized medicine research activities going on. Demand for more biospecimens provides new challenges and opportunities for developing strategies to build biobanking into a business that is better able to supply the biospecimen needs of the future. A paradigm shift is required particularly in organization and funding, as well as in how and where biospecimens are collected, stored and distributed. New collection sites, organized as Research Ready Hospitals (RRHs) and new public-private partnership models are needed for sustainability and increased biospecimen availability. Biobanks will need to adopt industry-wide standard operating procedures, better and “non-destructive” methods for quality assessment, less expensive methods for sample storage/distribution, and objective methods to manage scarce biospecimens. Ultimately, the success of future biobanks will rely greatly on the success of public-private partnerships, number and diversity of available biospecimens, cost management and the realization that an effective biobank is one that provides high quality and affordable biospecimens to drive research that leads to better health and quality of life for all.