With the new era of precision medicine, how the biopharma industry views biobanks is changing. Previously, biobanks were seen just as sites for cold storage of tissue samples. Today, the biopharma industry understands that biobanks are repositories of data and treasure troves of essential and useful information. The shift impacts the developers of biobanking technology.
The benefit of biobanking is enabling healthcare services to reduce their costs on a global level. Ultimately, the goal is for the healthcare industry to move from reactive treatment of symptoms to more proactive healthcare services that treat the cause of the symptoms while taking a preventative approach that delivers better health outcomes. The medical world continues to evolve and tissue storage methods have progressed. The need for increased storage capacity will grow in response. Progressive countries have used biobanks to store cord blood for years. Other countries have been offering it only as a commercial service individually. While the face and role of biobanking are changing, the previous models help enable personalized medicine in the future.
As the global population continues to age, the demand for long-term healthy tissue storage increases. Biobanking of healthy tissue like embryonic stem cells from cord blood can help regenerate damaged tissue. This is most likely going to be the new standard in the near future. Studying stored disease tissue will lead to the discovery of new treatment options.
Cell and Gene Therapy Sector
Another sector increasing the demand on biobanks recently is cell and gene therapy. Recent developments in the use of cell and gene therapies for cardiovascular disease and cancer are likely to put even more demand on biobanking services. Through the use of cell and gene therapies, large-scale drug discoveries are shaping personalized cancer treatments for individuals. As this medical space grows, there will be an increased demand put on biobanking capacity. The World Health Organization attributes the highest mortality rates to cancer, infectious disease, and cardiovascular disease. These three can be characterized more precisely. That would mean that a treatment could be chosen based on the molecular profiles of each individual. Treatment efficacy and patients’ quality of life would be greatly improved. Biobanks can help encourage the growth of the cell and gene therapy sector, thereby promoting personalized medicine and practices.
Biobanking Technological Innovations
Biobanking technology is also evolving with the changing industry demands. Biobanks first emerged in the mid-‘90s, but the term only referred to collections of human samples kept in cold storage. In essence, the “technologies” were just large freezers that maintained ultra-low temperatures. Today, this definition has expanded to include various technologies used to store a wide range of biological materials obtained from various sources. One specific area of research is examining the use of human biomaterials to replace animal models. This places an extra storage demand on biobanks. It’s not as simple as just creating more space to hold samples. The samples are also in greater demand due to the growth of the drug industry. Ultimately, this means the number of deposits and withdrawals of biobanks are more frequent. With such growth, the designs of biobanks have evolved as well.
Technology is being developed at an unprecedented rate as sample loading, archiving, and retrieving must be tracked and traceable. This is necessary to preserve long-term sample integrity. Modern biobanks have automated most of these processes. This is likely to be the focus of future automation and digitization in the biobanks sector. Technological advancements are needed to enhance freezers, sample monitoring, and robotization in the biobank industry. For instance, digital solutions have shifted from just managing sample location to managing all the data that is related to the sample’s quality. That includes how the sample was handled before storage, who manipulated it, and how the temperature in the freezer changed over time.
Automated Biobanks and Cost Reduction
Biobank automation can help cut costs associated with sample storage and the preparation of samples for analysis. Recently, there have been more funds pouring into biobanking globally. State funds and private support have helped balance out the technological advancements and market demand. This means the cost per sample has decreased even though it varies depending on the region’s regulations. In some countries, biobanking receives full government funding; some charge on individual levels, and some just charge for storing samples. Biobanks have more operational expenses than just sample storage, though. They have to pay a staff, provide consumables, and equipment maintenance as well as laboratory management.
Handling Data-Rich Samples
Until recently, sample information was stored separately. Capacity was one reason since it represents such a large quantity of data. But security and maintaining donor/patient confidentiality were other reasons. But today, thanks to modern technology, content is stored with samples which makes the biobank more of a data bank.
The Future of Biobanking
As biopharma and the medical world lean toward a more personalized treatment approach, the demands put on biobanks are likely to increase. The need for storing more samples from various tissue types will continue to increase. With these trends, the need for more storage capacity will grow as well. Biobanking is likely to play a major role in the future of healthcare by enabling the development of more targeted treatments for patients. Biobanks will be key to creating replacement tissues from stem cell, and creating preventative therapies used early in the disease. This may reduce the overall financial burden caused by some of the present ineffective nonspecific therapies.
The pressure will be on biobanks to develop common methodologies and standards to help keep pace with the collaborative approach of the drug industry. Product development in the drug industry requires much data. There should be more effort between databanks to facilitate data sharing. Creating standards and methodologies may help bundle physical biobanks into a single searchable database eventually.
Final Thoughts
At the emergence of biobanks, the focus was sample collection and storage. As technology, science, and medical sectors expanded, biobanks had to rise to the increased demand. Today, they are perched on the edge of discovery as a contributory factor. They have a lot more to offer the medical world, but that’s no surprise!
Resources
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK567260/
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcell.2019.00246/full
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6694/12/4/776/htm
https://researchopenworld.com/patient-oriented-biobanking-for-cancer-research/
https://translational-medicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12967-019-1922-3
