Biobanking of Human Biospecimens ― Principles and Practice

This volume is the first comprehensive text on human biobanking, authored by scientists and regulatory officers who have led the field over the past 10 years. It covers biobanking issues and its importance in advancing the field of research in cancer, cardiovascular, metabolic, and other diseases. Biobanks of human specimens have become the cornerstone for research on human health that harnesses the power of “omics” technologies to identify biomarkers for disease susceptibility. Biobanks are an essential component of the development of personalized medicine, which relies on the molecular analysis of biospecimens that are truly representative of individuals and of diseases. Over the past decade, biobanking has been the focus of major investments and developments aimed at developing appropriate infrastructure, methods, networking practice and evidence-based pre-analytical procedures. This volume explores topics including specimen storage, protocol design, specimen collection, pre-analytical processing and preservation, long-term storage, retrieval and separation, and distribution to analytical laboratory platforms. These activities are extremely complex and are essential for biomedical and biotechnological developments and this text provides critical information about biobanking for the development of future forms of medicine.?

Pierre Hainaut, Ph.D., is Professor of Cancer Biology and holds a Chair of Excellence in Translational Cancer Research at University Grenoble-Alpes, France. As head of Molecular Carcinogenesis at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC, World Health Organization, Lyon, France), he has led the development of international standards for biobanking in the fields of molecular epidemiology and pathology, and has been involved in many projects implementing biomarkers in international molecular epidemiological studies in Africa, Asia or Latin America. Currently, he is the Director of the Institute for Advanced Biosciences, a joint research center of the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM), National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and Universite Grenoble-Alpes, dedicated to Epigenetics, Chronic Diseases and Cancer. He is also responsible for Molecular Diagnosis of Cancer at the University Hospital of Grenoble-Alpes, France. His research focuses on TP53 mutations and on biomarkers of transition from chronic diseases to cancer.

Jim Vaught, Ph.D., spent 14 years at the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI), most recently as the Chief of the Biorepositories and Biospecimen Research Branch (BBRB) in the Cancer Diagnosis Program. He’s one of the founding members of the International Society for Biological & Environmental Repositories (ISBER) and was its second President. He has provided biobanking consulting services to a variety of? ? international? organizations, ?and? serves on a number of biobank advisory groups. He was Senior Editor for Biospecimens and Biorepositories for the AACR journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention and is the Editor-in-Chief of Biopreservation and Biobanking, the official journal of ISBER. He is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the International Prevention Research Institute (Lyon). Dr. Vaught is the immediate Past-President of ISBER and a member of the Board of Directors.

Kurt Zatloukal, MD, is Professor of Pathology at the Medical University of Graz. He coordinated the preparatory phase of a European biobanking and biomolecular resources research infrastructure (BBMRI) within the 7th EU framework programme, and is the National Node Director of BBMRI. His research fields are molecular pathology of liver diseases and cancer, and the development of biobanking technologies.

Markus Pasterk is Administrative Director of BBMRI-ERIC, the pan-European Research Infrastructure for Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources with Headquarters in Graz, Austria. Before that he was Chief Operating Officer and Vice President/Science, at the International Prevention Research Institute in Lyon, France and Scientific Coordinator of the International Agency for Research of Cancer in Lyon, France. He is an expert in research and E&T management.