ABSTRACT
Biobanking is likely to be a crucial element of the medical and public health response to COVID-19 and future pandemics. The storage and distribution of samples and data are vital for 1) collecting and analyzing biospecimens from patients for COVID-19 related research and 2) may become increasingly important as a resource to maintain other kinds of biomedical research as regular recruitment for clinical studies becomes more difficult during a pandemic. Nevertheless, biobanks face a number of unique ethical, social, and governance challenges during COVID-19 that may require new practices and policies to maintain their work and meet the needs of researchers, donors, and other biobank stakeholders. These challenges may be experienced by both new biobanks created explicitly for COVID-19 related research, and existing biobanks. Additionally, these challenges may be further complicated by the need to balance public health surveillance uses of samples and data and the clinical research uses of biobank resources. To address these issues researchers at Case Western Reserve University, University of Louisville, and University of North Carolina in partnership with International Society of Biological and Environmental Repositories (ISBER) Ethics and COVID19 TaskForce created a survey to assess the ethical/governance challenges of biobanking during the COVID-19 pandemic, explore the ethical challanges associated with creating new COVID-19 biobanks, and address needed resources for addressing the ethical challenges of COVID-19 biobanking. This talk will present the findings from our COVID19 ELSI survey and discuss how the results may better inform biobanking practices and policies. We believe that a better understanding of the experiences and needs of biobanks will help inform the development of best practices/policies for maintaining biobank operations and address the needs of existing biobanks and new COVID-19 related research resources. Overall, we will discuss how our findings will inform ISBER policies and guidance regarding biobanking best practices, identify areas of need for maintaining biobanks during a pandemic, and benefit ISBER members and the broader biobanking community by providing practical strategies for addressing emerging ELSI issues related to the pandemic.