A nationwide fluidics biobank of polytraumatized patients: implemented by the Network “Trauma Research” (NTF) as an expansion to the TraumaRegister DGU® of the German Trauma Society (DGU)

Abstract

To decrypt the complexity of the posttraumatic immune responses and to potentially identify novel research pathways for exploration, large-scale multi-center projects including not only in vivo and in vitro modeling, but also temporal sample and material collection along with clinical data capture from multiply injured patients is of utmost importance. To meet this gap, a nationwide biobank for fluidic samples from polytraumatized patients was initiated in 2013 by the task force Network “Trauma Research” (Netzwerk Traumaforschung, NTF) of the German Trauma Society (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Unfallchirurgie e.V., DGU). The NTF-Biobank completes the clinical NTF-Biobank Database and complements the TR-DGU with temporal biological samples from multiply injured patients. The concept behind the idea of the NTF-Biobank was to create a robust interface for meaningful innovative basic, translational and clinical research. For the first time, an integrated platform to prospectively evaluate and monitor candidate biomarkers and/or potential therapeutic targets in biological specimens of quality-controlled and documented patients is introduced, allowing reduction in variability of measurements with high impact due to its large sample size. Thus, the project was introduced to systemically evaluate and monitor multiply injured patients for their (patho-)physiological sequalae together with their clinical treatment strategies applied for overall outcome improval.