In the rapidly evolving field of biopharmaceutical research, Biobanks have emerged as a critical component in understanding and treating various diseases.
We recently met Dr Tony Cox OBE, Chief Executive Officer of UK Biocentre to help explain the use of biobanks, their functions, uses, challenges, opportunities, and how the pharmaceutical industry can engage with them.
What is a Biobank?
A biobank is a type of biorepository that stores biological samples, usually human, for use in research.
These samples can be blood, tissue, or other biological substances, and are often associated with detailed medical and personal data. Biobanks have become an important resource in medical research, supporting many types of contemporary research like genomics and personalised medicine
Tony explains how in biology, “most research is predicated on samples – they’re absolutely vital resources. The long term maintenance of those samples is vital for the integrity of much research that goes on.”
Biobanks are used for a variety of purposes, primarily to support research. They have become an essential tool in new drug discoveries and drug development.
“Biobanking is about how to collect, maintain, and safely store those collections of samples, so that not only are they there for reference in the future, but they can be used transactionally to support further research.”
Biobanks permit large-scale analysis for the identification of specific disease biomarkers starting from biological or digital material with well-annotated clinical and biological data. This is essential for improving personalised medical approaches, where effective biomarker identification is a critical step for disease diagnosis and prognosis.
“Anybody who’s owned a minus 80 freezer in the lab knows that keeping hold of collections and actually looking after them to a high level of quality, and maintaining and making them accessible is not straightforward.” say Tony Cox.
Challenges and opportunities for Biobanks
Biobanks present numerous opportunities. They have the potential to advance global health research and speed up progress towards achieving universal health coverage. Biobanks also have a significant innovative potential in the whole process of biomedical research in the 21st century.
However, the field of biobanking does faces several challenges. The required biobanking infrastructure is currently fragmented and not prepared for the biobanking of microbiomes. The rapid advancement of technologies requires an urgent assessment of how biobanks can underpin research by preserving microbiome samples and their functional potential.
Security risks are another significant challenge for biobanks.
Regardless of the type of security used, biobanks are exposed to natural hazards (earthquakes, fires, floods), technical hazards (such as power outages) or damage caused by intrusions and theft of biological samples, computer hacking, or loss of confidential data. Along with technical issues, biobanking frequently raises important privacy and security issues that must be resolved as biobanks continue to grow in scale and scope.
Tony Cox explains that “having knowledge of a person’s DNA is not only a gross violation of privacy, but it also opens up significant vulnerabilities. I can understand why there is increasing concern and nervousness about what is happening to that data, especially as very large amounts are being collected now. It’s unclear what the long-term opportunities for bad actors to exploit this will be. Therefore, it’s crucial that we think very long and hard about how to protect that data.”
“As a biobank, we don’t collect any data about our samples that we manage, other than what’s necessarily generated as part of the processing. We don’t hold any patient-specific information. However, there is an increasing trend for both companies and research organisations to use trusted research environments to aggregate and hold their data. These environments are very secure and have strong safeguards for managing access to that data, with no direct visibility of the data.”
These developments help assure participants in these large studies that their data will be managed responsibly and securely for many years to come. It’s not only the implications for the individual that matter, but also for their descendants, their children, their grandchildren. When you begin to think through those implications, it’s a very significant subject that we must think about deeply and get right.”
How pharma professionals should engage with biobanks
Biobanks have become an essential tool for new drug discoveries and drug development. They play an important role in the whole process of patient prevention and prediction, follow-up, and therapy monitoring and optimisation. Therefore, it is crucial for the pharmaceutical industry to establish collaborations with biobanks to access valuable biological samples and associated data for their research and development activities.
Tony Cox recommends getting in touch with biobank providers at the earliest stage of a project.
“If you’re running a study or a clinical trial, thinking about the end game of that trial can be really important. Many of the resources that are collected during a trial need to be preserved potentially for years or even decades.”
“We advise on the collection strategies for those trials, but also on the long-term storage. Something as simple and mundane as choosing the right tube for samples to end up in could have cost implications. Savings in the hundreds of thousands of pounds could be realised if things are done in the right format and in the right way.”
Listen to the full interview with Dr Tony Cox.
