Is Your Biobank Ready For The Challenge Of Biomarker-Based Research?

By Mark A Collins Ph.D., BioFortis, Inc.

The vision of personalized medicine, the poor productivity of the pharmaceutical industry with respect to new drug approvals (NDA), and the drive to contain ever increasing healthcare costs is driving an unprecedented interest in biomarkers. As a result, biomarker-based studies are being adopted across the research and development process from early discovery through clinical research and clinical trials.

Fundamental to biomarker research is access to quality biospecimens that have been extensively annotated with clinical, molecular and patient data. While many organizations have invested heavily in the IT infrastructure of biospecimen management, or biobanking, such systems are facing challenges to effectively drive investigative biomarker-based research.

In this whitepaper we review the key drivers impacting “traditional” biobanking and detail the challenges such biobanks face in delivering new biomarker-based research. To facilitate the discussion of approaches to overcoming these challenges, we introduce the concept of Next Generation Biobanking and define the attributes an “ideal” Next Generation Biobank would need to drive effective biomarker-based research. Finally we demonstrate the benefits of adopting a Next Generation Biobanking approach, with a case study in cancer biomarker discovery.