Assignment One — Assignment Two — Concepts List — What is Biobank — Git Intuition

What is a Biobank.

Basically biobanks are this gargantuan repositories of samples retrieved from a wide array of people. Biobanks may comprise of various niches in the collections of the samples which are relevant to the idea for which they were collected such as some brain cell project research specimen collections, stem cell research collection,etc,etc.

How biobanks work?

Biobanks are used in many scenarios: For example a researcher has an idea to develop a cure for a disease, before he thinks about proceeding about the disease he will need two things that are of cardinal importance.

1. Number of people with the ailment germane to his research.(Experimental group)
2. Sample of the cohort people without any ailment. (Control group)

1. Sample of the cohort people without any ailment. (Control group)

• Without biobanks this step would have taken months, if not year, but with biobank the researcher can just ask for specific number of samples that are relevant to his research needs.

Samples:

Typically samples are collections of blood, tissues, saliva, urine, etc that are retrieved from the patient/subject.(Like for example in UK biobank 500,000 altruistic people volunteered for providing their sample specimen for the betterment of the research and medicines).

Along with the samples(aliquot) information the patient information(Lifestyle, race, environment, habits,etc is stored for each person’s specimen), visit information,etc is also recorded. Managing all this can efficiently be done with databases handled by computers.

The sample thus collected are centrifuged at high speed so as to separate them into their constituents. Which are stored in different tubes where each tube has a unique identifier that uniquely identifies it to their particular doner. `

Samples are stored in freezer archives to preserve them in a perfect condition for as long as possible. Biobanks help prevent/treat diseases and making better meds targeted at larger more diverse audience.

Biobanks, in research perspective, helps researcher to understand how different factors(which are similar over the array of control group/experimental group)act together as the determinant of any ailment; i.e; how different factors interact to influence the risk of any disease.

Important keywords:

• Aliquots: An individual sample/specimen extracted from a total amount of sample.

• Cohorts: A group of subject with common defining characteristics(For ex: “age group”).

• Control Group: Control group consist elements that are present as exact same characteristics as the experimental group (aside from the ailing factor).

Questions:

• What is a freezer?

A freezer is a huge archive that is used to store all the specimens. As these specimens are highly susceptible to contamination the freezer is inert(Cryopreservation is used) so as to avoid any cross contamination between the specimens, general temperature of the freezer is kept at -80 so as to preserve the specimens for a long term use.

• What is the typical contents of a freezer?

A freezer is basically a preservative solution that can size from a refrigerator to a warehouse. Freezer internally is cryogenically frozen to keep the specimens intact. Sophisticated and large scale freezers typically have a retrieving automation tool/machinery that retrieves the requested sample from the archive(So you don’t have to do this manually so this minimizes the direct human/external contact with the archive further safeguarding them against potential vulnerabilities). The physical samples of specimen ,i.e; blood,tissue,plasma etc are typically stored in containers in the freezer where each container contains the samples from one individual.

• What happens to the specimens that are collected?

The collected specimens are

1. Stored in the freezer archive.
2. These specimens are requested by any medical institute/researcher/hospital.
3. Upon such requests these specimens are retrieved from the storage and made ready to be transported.
4. These specimens are shipped to location.

• How is a specimen transported from one location to another?

The specimens are retrieved from the freezer. The specimens are vulnerable while transportation so to ensure the safe passage for the specimens they are encased in a transportation-safe case. Cases that are made up of hard material with Cryopreservatives in them so as to keep the specimens in a freezed state for all of the shipping phase. So when the specimens arrive at their destination they’re in that state as if they’ve just got out of the freezer archive.

• What are the different types of biobanking?

The different types of biobanks are

1. Disease oriented
2. Population oriented
3. Virtual Biobank
4. Tissue Banks