The Need to Set up a Biobank Dedicated to Lymphoid Malignancies: Experience of a Single Center (Laboratory of Clinical and Experimental Pathology, University Côte d'Azur, Nice, France).

Several therapies to improve the management of lymphoma are currently being investigated, necessitating the development of new biomarkers. However, this requires high-quality and clinically annotated biological material. Therefore, we established a lymphoma biobank including all available biological material (tissue specimens and matched biological resources) along with associated clinical data for lymphoma patients diagnosed, according to the WHO classification, between 2005 and 2022 in the Laboratory of Clinical and Experimental Pathology, Nice, France. We retrospectively included selected cases in a new collection at the Côte d'Azur Biobank, which contains 2150 samples from 363 cases (351 patients). The male/female ratio was 1.3, and the median age at diagnosis was 58 years. The most common lymphoma types were classical Hodgkin lymphoma, diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, and extra-nodal marginal zone lymphoma of MALT tissue. The main sites of lymphoma were the mediastinum, lymph node, Waldeyer's ring, and lung. The Côte d'Azur Biobank is ISO 9001 and ISO 20387 certified and aims to provide high quality and diverse biological material to support translational research projects into lymphoma. The clinico-pathological data generated by this collection should aid the development of new biomarkers to enhance the survival of patients with lymphoid malignancies.

Establishment of a Collection of Blood-Derived Products from COVID-19 Patients for Translational Research: Experience of the LPCE Biobank (Nice, France).

In only a few months after its inception, the COVID-19 pandemic lead to the death of hundreds of thousands of patients and to the infection of millions of people on most continents, mostly in the United States and in Europe. During this crisis, it was demonstrated that a better understanding of the pathogenicity, virulence, and contagiousness of SARS-CoV-2, all of which were initially underestimated, was urgently needed. The development of diagnostic tests to identify SARS-CoV-2 or to detect anti-SARS-CoV2 antibodies in blood, of vaccines, and of preventive and curative treatments has been relying on intense activity of scientists in academia and industry. It is noteworthy that these scientists depend on the use of high-quality biological samples taken from positive COVID-19 patients in a manner that preserves their integrity. Given this unique and emergent situation, it was necessary to urgently establish biological collections clinically annotated for immediate development of clinical and translational research projects focusing on COVID-19 biological aspects. It is in this very specific context that biobanks must rapidly adapt their infrastructure and/or operational capacity to fulfill new critical needs. We report the establishment of a biobank dedicated to the collection of blood-derived products (plasma, serum, and leukocytes) from COVID-19 patients hospitalized in the Nice Pasteur Hospital (Nice, France).