Biobanking in the COVID-19 Era and Beyond: Part 1. How Early Experiences can Translate into Actionable Wisdom

Published

March 26, 2021

Author(s)

Clare M. Allocca, Marianna J. Bledsoe, Monique Albert, Sergey Anisimov, Elena Bravo, Marta Castelhano, Yehudit Cohen, Mieke DeWilde, Koh Furuta, Zisis Kozlakidis, Dunja Martin, Anabela Martins, Helen Morrin, Shannon McCall, Rebecca Pugh

Abstract

The era of COVID-19 has brought about a number of novel challenges for the global biobanking community. To better position the biobanking community to cope with current and future challenges, the International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories (ISBER) COVID-19 Response Task Force was convened to identify needs and gaps in existing biobanking tools and to make recommendations to benefit the community. Towards these goals, the Task Force assembled a set of questions to explore individual biobanks' experiences, with emphasis on identification of key challenges and approaches, including tools employed. A survey was designed using these questions and administered by ISBER. This paper presents a summary of the aggregated data obtained from the survey responses, illustrating some of the major issues encountered and identifying which tools the survey respondents found most useful. In particular, this paper focuses on the challenges identified during the early months of the COVID-19 era. Recommendations are provided to support biobank emergency preparedness for the future, address lessons learned and propose solutions to bridge identified gaps. The analysis and the complete survey data set will also inform the larger Task Force goal to develop specific tool recommendations.

Citation

Biopreservation and Biobanking

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

Biobank, Tools, COVID-19, Standards, Survey, Best Practices

Citation

Allocca, C. , Bledsoe, M. , Albert, M. , Anisimov, S. , Bravo, E. , Castelhano, M. , Cohen, Y. , DeWilde, M. , Furuta, K. , Kozlakidis, Z. , Martin, D. , Martins, A. , Morrin, H. , McCall, S. and Pugh, R. (2021), Biobanking in the COVID-19 Era and Beyond: Part 1. How Early Experiences can Translate into Actionable Wisdom, Biopreservation and Biobanking, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=930731 (Accessed December 14, 2024)