A multidisciplinary approach to the biobank concept: Integrative review

Abstract

Biobanks are multidisciplinary infras-tructures and, accordingly, this integrative research seeks to bring out the concept of biobank in the various sciences that construct and interpret it, so as to arrive at a holistic understanding of its essential components. This integrative review – guided by PRISMA and with quality assessment following CASPe – resulted in a selection of 30 articles. Data were analysed by Aristotelian categories and the results were interpreted on the complexity paradigm of Edgar Morin. The biobank concept was clarified by considering it to be the representation of a biological, social and cultural phenomenon in which knowledge and practices from diverse scientific fields enter into comple-mentary, antagonistic and ambiguous types of re-lationship. This network of signification, analysed here using categories from Aristotelian philosophy, has impacts on the construction of subjectivity and forms of socialisation.