Biobanks are diverse processing and storage facilities that maintain biospecimens. These stored biological materials can be used for drug development and discovery efforts, precision medicine studies, biomarker-based preclinical research, and more. Increasingly, biobanks are also storing stem cell lines, such as induced pluripotent stem cell lines that are being derived from both healthy and diseased donors. Biobanks can also contain cord blood units collected from newborns, as well as associated tissues that may contain stem cell and progenitor cells, such as umbilical cord blood tissue or placental tissue. [Read more…]
Day 1 Recap for the “Biorepositories and Sample Management Summit”
Biobanks are biomedical research facilities that process and stores a wide variety of biospecimens, to include whole tissue, blood, DNA, plasma, purified saliva, cell lines, stem cell populations, and more. The goal of biobanking is to preserve biological samples for storage, and importantly, potential use at a later point in time. Biobanks are now playing a major role in assisting pharmaceutical companies with drug discovery and development efforts. They are also driving forward precision medicine efforts, as they have the capacity to allow physicians to select the best treatment option for specific patients. However, effectively preserving tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of biological samples can be a daunting task.
To honor this growing industry, speakers at the “Biorepositories and Sample Management Summit” held today at the Hilton Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts delivered a jam-packed day of content.
We heard presenters discuss biobanking topics that included: [Read more…]
An Introduction to Tissue Print Technologies with Dr. Sandra Gaston
Question and Answer with Dr. Sandra Gaston of Tufts Medical Center
As a featured speaker for the Biorepositories and Sample Management Summit on October 12-14th, 2015, in Boston, Massachusetts, Dr. Sandra Gaston will be presenting on “Tissue Print Technologies: An Innovative and Practice Approach to Obtaining High Quality Research Samples from Biopsies and Other Challenging Biospecimens.”
As an attendee and sponsor of the event, I was deeply honored to have the chance to interview Dr. Gaston about her research techniques, novel approaches to specimen management, and the use of these techniques in precision medicine. Her answers to our interview questions are below. [Read more…]
