Investment biobanking—increased returns from tissue samples

Researchers now expect that samples obtained from biobanks are accompanied with well-annotated clinical data. Opened in 2010, the Breast Cancer Campaign Tissue Bank takes this criterion a step further: researchers obtaining tissues are required to return the data they generate from every sample back to the Tissue Bank.

Key Points

• Samples donated by patients to biobanks are a very valuable resource for biomedical research that potentially enable accelerated translation of laboratory results to the clinic

• Returning the data derived from such samples back to the biobanks offers an efficient way of mining information from these samples, adding considerable value to the biobank holdings