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The enormous burden of infectious as well as noninfectious diseases makes biomarker discovery-based research an imperative in the developing world. The extent of diversity and heterogeneity in the type of diseases that plague the low- and middle-income group nations often show a stark difference with the diseases that affect the developed countries. In order to enable global efforts to combat any given disease, it is important for researchers to have a large number of reliable biospecimens on which they could validate their findings. Inappropriate representation of samples at primary stages of research has sometimes been attributed to researchers not being able to find gold-standard biomarkers. To capture the disease heterogeneity in the subjects ranging from genetic and ethnic diversity to the underlying pathogenesis, it is important to create a resource which could facilitate the availability of biospecimens from a large cohort of subjects along with their clinical annotation, which can be studied by researchers for reliable biomarker discovery. Moreover, biorepositories are also necessary resources for facilitating validation-based studies following the discovery phase. This chapter summarizes the pressing need for well-planned and managed biorepositories as one of the primary steps to facilitate reliable biomarker discovery in the developing world.

Context : Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a disease with controversies regarding co-morbidities. Studies have noted there are some doubts due to the disease's heterogeneity and cultural influence. Some studies have reflected that women are more likely to have Major depressive disorder(MDD) as co-morbidity while the impact of gender on co-morbid generalized anxiety disorder(GAD) was inconclusive. There are few Indian studies in this regard and hence this cross-sectional study was performed in a tertiary referral centre in Eastern India. Material and method : 100 consecutive eligible patients with OCD(Male=41,Female=59) were interviewed. The data were recorded for socio-demographic profile, depression and anxiety comorbidities. Results : The mean age of the study sample was 32.73 yrs, mostly from rural background(82%) and nuclear families (62%).The subjects were found to be suffering mostly from co-morbid MDD(85%) and GAD(83%).93% of our female subjects had co-morbid MDD while 90% of them had co-morbid GAD. The corresponding percentages for 41 males was 73%(for both MDD and GAD). Gender had an impact on both these co-morbid diagnoses(P-value