Biobanking in the COVID-19 Era and Beyond: Part 1. How Early Experiences Can Translate into Actionable Wisdom.

The era of COVID-19 has brought about a number of novel challenges for the global biobanking community. To better position the biobanking community to cope with current and future challenges, the International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories (ISBER) COVID-19 Response Task Force was convened to identify needs and gaps in biobanking tools (existing resources that support good practice), for example, standards, best practices, business, etc. and to make recommendations to benefit the community. Toward these goals, the Task Force assembled a set of questions to explore individual biobanks' experiences, with emphasis on identification of key challenges and approaches, including tools employed. A survey was designed with the use of these questions and administered by ISBER. This article presents a summary of the aggregated data obtained from the survey responses, illustrating some of the major issues encountered and identifying which tools the survey respondents found most useful. In particular, this article focuses on the challenges identified during the early months of the COVID-19 era. Recommendations are provided to support biobank emergency preparedness for the future, address lessons learned, and propose solutions to bridge identified gaps. The analysis and the complete survey dataset will also inform the larger Task Force goal to develop specific tool recommendations.

Opportunities and Risks for Research Biobanks in the COVID-19 Era and Beyond.

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, which caused a global outbreak of COVID-19 disease, has been a crisis of extraordinary proportions, causing serious impacts for research and public health. Biobanks have played a key important role in understanding the disease and response. In our article we will highlight the opportunities and risks of biobanks during and after the pandemic. The different aspects of safety and sustainability have and will be the main challenges for biobanks. Furthermore, the role of biobanks in biomedical research and public health has been emphasized as well as opportunities that have arisen for their participation in research.