Current Status, Challenges, Policies, and Bioethics of Biobanks

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Current Status, Challenges, Policies, and Bioethics of Biobanks

The article focuses on biobanks and bioethics in countries with established repositories for the storage of biomaterials. The United States, United Kingdom, France, Sweden, Italy, the Netherlands, and Korea are the major countries in the world with the largest biobanks. Biobanks act a storage and collection point of biospecimens used in medical research for the identification of risk factors of certain diseases, drug therapies, and diagnosis of chronic illnesses (Kang et al., 2013).

The paper also looks into bioethics and safety in biobanks. The ethics involved include a patient’s consent to conduct research or provide information to doctors or researchers. The researcher should provide adequate information to the patient prior to conducting any procedure and the implications and consequences of the processes. Institutions should have an Institutional Review Board (IRB), a body that oversees bioethics and biosafety in biotechnology and scientific research (Kang et al., 2013). Biobanks also have policies that guide the distribution of data and biospecimens in institutions. Biobanks have increased to meet the demand for qualified biospecimens globally.

The biodata and specimens are essential tools of research in various fields such as metabolomics, nanotechnology, proteomics, molecular imaging, and genomics. Thus, biobanks play a crucial role in foreseeing the success of research conducted by the afore-mentioned groups while studying certain diseases such as genetic disorders and cancer. Having state-of-the art biobanks and repositories around the globe is a sure way of meeting the global demand for quality biospecimens necessary for biotechnology research. Countries such as Korea have set up a National Biobank to ensure safe and harmonized collection and distribution of biospecimens.

Bioethics and safety are of the essence in research while dealing with biospecimens in biobanks. It is ethical to protect the interest of the patients involved in the research by providing all the necessary information and treating their data with confidentiality. Biospecimens are essential tools for research on diseases such as cancer and they should be stored appropriately under the set guidelines and policies (Kang et al., 2013).

Reference

Kang, B., Park, J., Cho, S., Lee, M., Kim, N., Min, H., Lee, S., Park, O., & Han, B. (2013). Current status, challenges, policies, and bioethics of biobanks. Genomics & Informatics, 11 (4): 211-217. http://dx.doi.org/10.5808/GI.2013.11.4.211