Biobanking: the foundation of personalized medicine.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Biobanking has been identified as a key area for development in order to accelerate the discovery and development of new drugs. This review describes the recent advances in the field of biobanking and biospecimen research, with special reference to tumour banks which are the biobanks of primary interest in oncology. RECENT FINDINGS: There is a dramatic deficiency of high-quality, well annotated cancer biospecimens. Biospecimen research is a fast developing field that will improve biobanking methodology and biobanking is becoming more professionally organized with increased attention to quality management. Biobank networks are developing rapidly in order to combine and share resources. SUMMARY: Biobanking services must improve rapidly to serve the needs of personalized medicine and biospecimen research should be encouraged and supported at all levels from project funding to publication of results. Biobanks need to be run to high professional standards and the importance of adequate funding, training and certification must be emphasized. The growing presence of national and international biobank networks will allow biobanks to synergize. The development of a biobanking community will facilitate teamwork to overcome common challenges and enhance communication with multiple stakeholder groups.

Overexpression of CC3/TIP30 is associated with HER-2/neu status in breast cancer.

PURPOSE: The human CC3/TIP30 gene is a putative metastasis suppressor gene, based on the results of experimental studies using lung, colon and melanoma cell lines. However, there is very little evidence from studies on clinical material, in support of such a role for the gene. In this study, we evaluated the expression of CC3/TIP30 in human breast cancer tissue and investigated the possible associations with the clinicopathological parameters. METHODS: Total RNA and proteins were extracted from the frozen breast tumor and matched normal tissues. Evaluation of CC3/TIP30 expression was assessed by reverse transcription (RT)-PCR and reverse phase protein array. Immunohistochemistry of CC3/TIP30 on breast tissue microarrays was also analyzed. RESULTS: We have found that CC3/TIP30 expression is significantly associated with positive HER-2/neu status at both mRNA (P=0.023) and protein (P=0.016) levels. Immunohistochemical analysis on tissue microarrays also shows a positive correlation between CC3 expression and HER-2/neu status (P=0.0028). CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest a potential link between the expression of CC3/TIP30 gene and the HER-2/neu oncogene-mediated signal pathway.These findings could not have been predicted from previous experimental studies, and suggest that CC3/TIP30 may play a complex role in breast cancer.

The Research Biobank of the Year Competition of the European, Middle Eastern and African Society for Biopreservation and Biobanking (ESBB): aims and achievements.

With the increasing number of research biobanks and the importance of their role in supporting medical and biological research, the development and sharing of biobanking best practices and benchmarking standards has become paramount. To promote outstanding biobank services for research, the Research Biobank of the Year Competition (RBYC) has been inaugurated by the European, Middle-Eastern, and African Society for Biopreservation and Biobanking (ESBB) in October 2013. The procedures for the call and evaluation procedure, including the newly developed scoring system, are presented here. The statistics and evaluation results of the first year's applications, as well as the experiences of the jury are reported here, and improvements for the RBYC in subsequent years are proposed. Beyond offering a unique benchmarking opportunity for biobanks, the RBYC is discussed as a novel tool to enhance biobank quality, transparency, usage, connectivity, innovation, and sustainability.