Construction and Application of Biobanks for Infectious Diseases: Focus on SARS-CoV-2

Biobanks are foundational infrastructures that collect and provide standardized, high-quality, and research-ready biological material and associated data. The advent of high-throughput technologies has further supported the creation of biobanks globally. However, the same rate of growth has not occurred in the field of infectious diseases, where biobanks are significantly fewer as compared to other scientific fields such as oncology. This narrative review presents the main aspects that need to be taken into consideration for the construction and application of biological sample infrastructure for infectious diseases, with a number of examples taken from the recent COVID-19 pandemic.