Pre-conditions for high quality biobanking in large human epidemiological cohorts for metabolomics and other - Omics studies

Abstract

A first generation of large-scale prospective cohorts that included biobanks with blood and/or urine samples was initiated in the late 1980s and early 1990s, in the USA and Europe. Currently, prospective biobank studies of a similar size, including 300,000-500,000 subjects, have started in the UK as reported by Elliott and Peakman (J Epidemiol 37(2):234-244, 2008), Sweden, Japan, Western Australia, the USA and Germany. A key element of biobanks is the collection of high quality samples from all study participants. For blood and additional materials high quality preservation of quality relies on minimizing pre-analytical artefacts that may be incurred during specimen collection, primary processing, transport and/or storage of the samples. This is a pre-requisite for later application of systematic molecular analyses like genomics, epigenomics or metabolomics.