Biobanking: A novel method that has the potential to transform universal health

• The collection, processing, and storage of biological samples and data for research is known as biobanking.
  
• To quickly increase what we now know in the realms of health and illness, mass data collection will be critical.
• Infrastructure, according to experts, needs to be maintained in order to attain its full potential, but ethical considerations are crucial.

A UN scientific summit heard that increasing the availability of high-quality biological samples through biobanks has the potential to boost global health research and accelerate progress toward Sustainable Development Goals like universal health coverage.

Biobanking is the collection, annotation, storage, and redistribution of physiological fluid or tissue samples for research to better understand health and disease.

As scientists hurried to discover effective vaccinations and treatments, the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need of collecting and analysing samples and related data.

"Biobanking is critical in achieving SDG 3 — excellent health and well-being — by assisting in the development of innovative cures for the world's greatest healthcare concerns," said virologist Zisis Kozlakidis, one of the presenters at the UN General Assembly's online Science Summit in New York.

The SDGs, which were developed by UN member states in 2015, are "a shared blueprint" for achieving a better and more sustainable future for all by 2030. Ending poverty and hunger, increasing food security, boosting nutrition and supporting sustainable agriculture, and ensuring healthy lives for all people are among the 17 aims.

According to Kozlakidis, who is the head of the laboratory services and biobank group at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in Lyon, France, medical research relies on the analysis of samples, and because associations in many diseases are often weak, large quantities of samples are required.

"The consequence is clear: the more well-characterized, high-quality samples available through biobanks, the faster research advances and impacts today's delivery of precision healthcare as part of SDG3," Kozlakidis said.

Kozlakidis discussed how data acquired as part of ordinary clinical healthcare might be re-used for research to improve health services in an increasingly digital world at the summit meeting on September 22. "We've seen how artificial intelligence has opened up a new world of possibilities and promise, but it requires working with enormous amounts of high-quality data [as found in some biobanks]."

He went on to say that the digital health approach used in high-income countries would need to be tweaked for resource-constrained environments.

"Biobanks house human samples like tumours that are removed by surgery, [and] blood that is collected during diagnostics, and these biological materials carry highly precise information on human diseases," said Kurt Zatloukal, a professor of pathology at the Medical University of Graz in Austria. This understanding of human diseases paves the way for new diagnostics and treatments to be developed."

He emphasised that biosample data is a valuable resource for the digital transformation of health systems.

According to Zatloukal, global income for biobanking would exceed $53 billion in 2027, highlighting one of the fundamental issues facing biobanking: the drug industry is necessary to supply money, while patients are hesitant to give their samples to drug companies.

"To address this issue, a model called Expert Centers has been devised," Zatloukal said at the conference. He explained that transferring or selling bio-samples to industry directly by biobanks is avoided in this approach since it entails cooperative funding and contributions from public and private companies, as well as the sharing of data and knowledge.

He added, "This methodology of converting biological raw material into knowledge and data [may] also be used to promote international collaboration."

More needs to be done to address the challenges facing biobanking in Africa, according to Fredrick Chite Asirwa, executive director and chief executive of the International Cancer Institute in Kenya, including raising awareness among healthcare professionals, policymakers, and patients, as well as promoting the necessary infrastructure and networks to support biobanks.

"The ethical and legal implications of establishing biobanks are most [essential], so that the processes that we design are actually extremely relevant to the problems that are being addressed now within our systems," he said.