Blog Posts
Public sector biobanking plays a crucial role in advancing the life sciences industry by enabling the development of new therapies, diagnostics, and vaccines. In this blog, we will first discuss the challenges within the biobank-industry ecosystem. Then, we will explore potential opportunities for improvement.
The Biobank-Industry Ecosystem
This ecosystem consists of both providers and research users of clinical biospecimens. Specifically, providers include biobanks, hospitals, doctors, and commercial intermediaries or brokers. On the other side, research users are biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, which are essential for developing new therapies, vaccines, and diagnostics
01. Why Academic / Hospital Biobanks Should Provide Biospecimens to Industry
The Main Reason Academic Biobanks Should Provide Biospecimens to Industry The main reason is to improve patient care. Industry plays a vital role in bringing new therapies and diagnostics to the patient. Yet, industry can only achieve this if it can access suitable...
02. Ensuring Public Support For Biobank Cooperation With Industry
Public Attitudes to Biobank Cooperation With Industry Biospecimen access is vital for industry development of vaccines, diagnostics & therapeutics. So what is the level of public trust & support? In general, industry involvement in research tends to lower...
03. The Main Actors Providing Biosamples To Industry
Most human biosamples originate in the public sector. That is in public hospitals and publicly-funded population biobanks. So we need public-private partnerships to support human tissue procurement for the private sector. Public-Private Partnerships in...
04. The Biosample and Human Tissue Procurement Needs of Different Industry Players
This article examines three different industry players that require biospecimen suppliers to meet their human tissue procurement needs. Large pharmaceutical companies Large in vitro diagnostics companies Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in healthcare biotechnology...
05. Acceptable Transactions in Biobanking
What kind of financial transactions are legitimate for human biological samples? There is some uncertainty about the correct answer to this question. There are also some differences of opinion. The Oviedo Convention The Council of Europe’s Oviedo Convention...
06. What is Commodification?
Commodification (or commoditization) happens when something is treated purely as a commodity—a product that can be bought, sold, or traded. This concept often has negative implications, especially when applied to the human body and its parts. As a result, there’s a...
07. Why Biobank Access Policies Should Be Publicly Available
It is not easy for industry researchers to find suitable academic biobanks. For one thing, the biobank needs to have the clinical samples required. For another, it must have policies that allow industry access. Unfortunately, biobank access policies may contain...
08. Biospecimen Provenance: What Researchers Need To Know
Every biosample or tissue sample used for medical research has a different journey. The journey starts when a person donates a biosample and it ends when a researcher analyses the same sample. In between, there are a wide variety of possible routes, events and...