Hundreds of thousands of individuals have freely donated bits of their bodies to biological repositories, proffering a vial of blood or a slice of skin in exchange for the promise of advancing medical research. But contrary to donor intentions, many of those specimens are sitting unused in lab freezers, suggesting that the biobanking system is not as efficient or effective as it could be.

According to a first-of-its-kind survey of 456 biobank managers in the US, nearly 70% of those questioned expressed concern that the samples in their repositories are underused. “Biobankers really worry,” says Gail Henderson, a medical sociologist at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill who led the study published in late January (Genome Med. 5, 3, 2013 ). “They have an imperative to collect, but they really want to make sure the specimens are used, and they worry about how to make that happen.”

It's not just a problem unique to US institutions either. “There are so many samples and data connected to these samples, but nobody is using them,” says Loreana Norlin, a project manager at the BioBanking and Molecular Resource Infrastructure of Sweden, a national biobanking facility and network based at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. “They're lying around in a freezer.”

Numerous causes for this underuse have been proposed, including the supply of samples outstripping demand, restrictive policies that allow only researchers affiliated with particular institutions or projects to access certain biobanks, and poor marketing. To encourage more researchers to use biobank wares, Liz Horn, former director of the Genetic Alliance BioBank, a Washington, DC–based repository operated by five patient advocacy organizations, recommends that biobanks advertise their collections at institutional events and external conferences. “You can't just collect,” she says.

Without fail

The Mayo Clinic Biobank, for example, regularly publicizes its collection during grand rounds at the Rochester, Minnesota–based hospital, enticing researchers with results gleaned from past studies done with the biobank's samples. “Our feeling is if people don't use the samples, then it's a failure,” says James Cerhan, principal investigator of the Mayo biobank.

In addition to homegrown advertising, biobanks may need to work together to fulfill their mission, notes Horn. “Standardization is going to be important for researchers to get samples from different collections,” she says, “and we need catalogs that say where these samples exist.”

A national registry, like that currently being built in Sweden, could show researchers comparable types and quantities of samples within biobanks around a country. Meanwhile, accreditation could provide further incentives for biobanks to harmonize collections and encourage use. Two years ago, the College of American Pathologists introduced a Biorepository Accreditation Program, and already 18 banks have been certified and an additional 15 are in the process.

“It's expensive,” says Henderson, “but it might be a first step toward making biobanks into a harmonized system.”