Chapel Hill, N.C. – Biobanks are organizations that collect, store and share human specimens (e.g., blood, solid tissues, hair) for research purposes. The rise of the human genome project and of large-scale genetics studies have spurred a dramatic increase in the number of biobanks in the last decade, increasing their importance in biomedical research.
But until now, biobanks in the U.S. have never been studied systematically, leaving few clear details as to how they are run or the policies and practices they use in managing their work.