What is a Biobank?
There are many different biobanks in the world. Put simply, biobanks (also known as “bioresources” or “research tissue banks”) collect, store, and release biological material. As in our case, the material may be blood or tissue from humans; in other biobanks, it may be soil samples, or bacteria, or plants, or strands of DNA, or several other types of biological material.
What type of Biobank is the HBRC?
Biobanks like the Human Biomaterials Resource Centre (HBRC) focus on human material so that it can be used in scientific research. In particular, they seek waste/leftover samples following hospital surgery, or blood from patients undergoing care or treatment in hospital. Such biobanks also have access to the archives of diagnostic samples which hospitals must keep in order to perform their duty of care over patients. Many people recognise that samples alone might not give scientists everything needed to perform the best science, so biobanks can also receive relevant medical information from the hospitals.
What makes HBRC special?
Biobanks like the HBRC are called “generic” biobanks. This means that they are not restricted to particular diseases or samples. Instead they seek to help as many areas of scientific research as practical by accepting human material and medical data about almost any disease or condition. Such biobanks can also accept blood, urine, or even faeces (with some data) from healthy volunteers too.
Because the exact intended use of samples may or may not be known at the time of collection, generic biobanks sometimes store the samples for a long time (particularly if samples are from rare diseases) – but equally, generic biobanks can release samples straightaway. It all depends on the science being performed at the time of donation.
Are generic biobanks a good thing?
We believe so. Generic biobanks are an easy way for patients to help new research into their disease or condition, because waste/leftover material is being “rescued” when otherwise it might have been discarded. Generic biobanks are also a "safe haven" for samples sufficiently rare that it could take years to collect enough for meaningful science. Finally, generic biobanks are an excellent way of ensuring that researchers are never given the identifiable details of patients and healthy donors.
This sounds great – how can I find out more?
Please consider reading the patient information sheets. The HBRC also runs short tours of its facilities every year. If you would like to join a tour, please contact a member of HBRC management.
Finally, you do not have to be a patient or healthy donor to help – there are other ways for you to be part of our solution too.