Does biobanking hold the key to achieving universal health?

[新德里]通过生物库增加高质量生物样品的可用性有可能促进全球healthresearch and speed up progress towardsSustainable Development Goalssuch as achieving universal health coverage, a UN science summit has heard.

Biobanking is the process by which samples of bodily fluid or tissue are collected, annotated, stored and redistributed for research to improve understanding of health and18beplay下载 。

这COVID-19大流行强调了样品的收集和处理的价值以及相关的data, as scientists scrambled to develop effective vaccines and treatments.

“Biobanking is central in supporting SDG3 — good health and well-being — by supporting the discovery of new treatments for the great healthcare challenges.”

Zisis Kozlakidis, International Agency for Research on Cancer

“Biobanking is central in supporting SDG3 — good health and well-being — by supporting the discovery of new treatments for the great healthcare challenges,” said virologist Zisis Kozlakidis, one of the speakers at the online Science Summit, held during the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Developed in 2015 by the UN member states, the SDGs are “a shared blueprint” to attain, by 2030, a better and sustainable future for all. The 17 goals include ending poverty and hunger, achieving18beplay ，改进nutritionand promoting sustainablebeplay下载官网西西软件，并确保全球健康的生活。

法国里昂国际癌症研究机构（IARC）实验室服务和生物银行集团负责人Kozlakidis解释说，医学研究是基于样本的分析，并且由于许多疾病的关联经常是基于样本的分析弱 - 需要大量样品。

“The implication is clear: if more, well-characterised, high-quality samples are available through biobanks, the faster research will advance and impact upon the faster delivery of precision healthcare today as part of SDG3,” Kozlakidis added.

在9月22日的峰会会议上，Kozlakidis谈到了如何重新使用作为常规临床医疗保健的一部分收集的数据进行研究，以改善越来越多的数字时代的卫生服务。“我们已经看到，人工智能的应用带来了可能性和希望的新时代，但它需要在大规模的高质量数据中运行（如某些生物库中发现）。”

He added that the model of digital health implemented in high-income countries would need to be adjusted for resource-restricted settings.

Kurt Zatloukal, a professor of pathology at the Medical University of Graz, Austria, told the meeting: “Biobanks host human samples like tumors that are removed by surgery, [and] blood that is taken during diagnostics, and these biological materials contain very detailed information on human diseases. This insight into human diseases lays the foundation for the development of new diagnostics and new drugs.”

这data generated through biosamples is a key resource for the digital transformation of health systems, he suggested.

World revenue for biobanking will surpass $53 billion in 2027, according to Zatloukal, who underlined one of the key challenges facing biobanking: the drug industry is required to provide funding, yet patients remain reluctant to make their samples available to drug companies.

“[To] tackle this problem, a model [has been] developed called专业中心,” Zatloukal told the summit. In this concept, he said, sending or selling bio-samples to industry directly by biobanks is avoided as it involves joint funding and contributions from public and private companies, with the data and knowledge shared between both.

“这种模式转变biological raw material into knowledge and data [can] also be used to enable international collaboration,” he said.

肯尼亚国际癌症研究所的执行董事兼首席执行官弗雷德里克·奇特·阿西尔瓦（Fredrick Chite Asirwa）表示，还需要做更多的事情来应对非洲生物群体面临的挑战，包括提高医疗保健专业人员，决策者和患者的认识，并促进必要的基础设施和必要的基础设施以及必要的基础设施以及必要支持生物库所需的网络。

“Most [important] is the ethical and legal implications of setting up biobanks, so that the processes that we develop are actually very responsive to the questions that are being asked currently within our systems,” he said.

This piece was produced by SciDev.Net’s Global desk.