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Endocrine Abstracts (2014) 34 YE1.4 | DOI: 10.1530/endoabs.34.YE1.4

SFEBES2014 Young Endocrinologists Session Establishing successful collaborations (5 abstracts)

Biobanking: what is it, and how could it be beneficial to me?

Jon Tobias


Musculoskeletal Research Unit, Bristol, UK.


A biobank is a repository that stores biological samples (usually human) for research. Samples comprise a range of tissues, of which the most common are blood samples. The latter are often separated into different constituents such as serum, DNA and RNA extracts at the time of initial collection. Cell lines can also be generated, thereby perpetuating material for DNA and related analyses. Generally, biological samples are stored in biobanks as part of a protocol pertaining to a defined population. The latter may comprise a representative sub-sample of the wider population, for example as part of a population based cohort. Alternatively, participants may be defined by a particular disease. Biological samples in biobanks are generally linked to other information about the individual, collected systematically as part of the same overall process. This may consist of a core dataset comprising clinical information collected in clinics for patient cohorts, or in the case of population based cohorts, information obtained from research clinics to which patients are invited or subsequent questionnaires. It is also possible to gain increasingly detailed clinical information through linkage to other databases such as HES.

Biobanks represent an important resource for research. As well as enabling the study of relationships between factors analysed in stored tissues and disease processes, the fact that information about phenotypes and exposures is collected in a standardised way may provide an important resource for subsidiary studies not involving the actual samples. Moreover, assuming data is collected in a standardised way, it may be possible to combine information with other similar biobanks, which may be essential for achieving sufficient power to investigate small effects such as those observed in genome wide association studies. Examples of research findings obtained from biobanks will be discussed using the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) as an example of a population based cohort, and the High Bone Mass study as an example of a cohort defined by a particular disease/characteristic.

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