Biobanking in the COVID-19 Era and Beyond: Part 2. A Set of Tool Implementation Case Studies

The COVID-19 era has brought about a number of novel challenges for the global biobanking community. An array of diverse tools (e.g., standards, best practices, and plans) exists to support quality and fitness-for-purpose in biobank operations. The International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories (ISBER) COVID-19 Response Task Force has set out to identify needs and gaps in these tools and make recommendations for the next generation of available tools, having closely examined the COVID-19-related challenges. While conducting this work to examine the relationships between tools and biobank adaptability, a subgroup of the task force conducted a parallel effort to develop and describe individual COVID-19 era case studies based on a number of operating biobanks. Each case study presents a different combination of implemented tools. Observations and lessons learned from these case studies are provided, and experiences with tool implementation are discussed. This information is supplemented by data relating to tool usefulness that was obtained through an ISBER survey discussed in a companion article. The knowledge gained from this study will be combined with other task force efforts to make recommendations to better position the biobanking community in their response to future emergencies.
This study was performed by a Task Force organized by members of the International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories (ISBER) Standards Advisory Committee. The authors gratefully acknowledge our fellow ISBER COVID-19 tools Task Force members who reviewed this article, developed figures and tables, and provided valuable feedback, particularly Daniel Simeon-Dubach, Rebecca Pugh, Sergey Anisimov, and Yehudit Cohen. Shannon McCall and the Duke University BioRepository & Precision Pathology Center receive funding from the United States National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute under UM1CA239755 (The Cooperative Human Tissue Network) and P30CA014236 (Duke University’s Cancer Center Support Grant).
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