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What is a biobank? What is a sample donation? And why should patients agree to such a donation? In order to inform patients about biobanking and to motivate them to provide biospecimens for medical research, the ZeBanC, the Central Biobank of the Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH), has published a film that is regularly screened on the Charité patient TV and in the foyer TV.

Researchers and doctors need biobanks because they facilitate a better understanding of diseases and thus enable the development of improved treatment options. Biobanks such as the ZeBanC collect, process and store a wide variety of biosamples, from blood and tissue to hair and tear fluid samples, under controlled and quality assured conditions. Scientists analyse the samples in order to research the causes of diseases, develop new targeted therapies and create the diagnostic basis for these. Biobanks are thus an essential factor for successful precision medicine.

The animated film by the ZeBanC explains the entire process of biobanking in a comprehensible way, starting with the patient giving consent in the hospital, through sample collection to storage of the samples in the biobank and their subsequent use for research. The film also shows that samples and data are very well protected: the ZeBanC works with a tested data protection concept that makes re-identification of the sample donors impossible by using double pseudonymisation of samples and data. With such details, the film provides interesting insights into the work of a biobank behind the scenes. It was produced in cooperation with the Biobank Graz and the German Biobank Node (GBN), the umbrella organisation of academic biobanks in Germany based at the Charité.

About the ZeBanC

The ZeBanC is a joint facility of the Charité and the BIH. Biospecimens from patient care and clinical trials have been collected, processed and stored here for research since 2011. Since 2016, it has offered space for several million biosamples in a newly constructed building on the Virchow-Klinikum campus. In addition, the ZeBanC has further branches at the Charité Campus Benjamin Franklin and at the Campus Mitte. About one million samples can be stored at minus 80 degrees Celsius in an automated deep-freeze storage system. At least another million samples can also be accommodated in liquid nitrogen (at up to minus 196 degrees Celsius) or other temperatures. This makes the ZeBanC one of the largest biobanks in Germany. Since 2019, it has been a partner biobank of the German Biobank Alliance (GBA) excellence network.

The ZeBanC is involved in a large number of studies. These include the large-scale research project Translational Safety Biomarker Pipeline (TransBioLine), which is funded by the European Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) for five years with a total of € 28 million. Approximately € 800,000 of this money has been allocated to the ZeBanC. The aim of the research programme is to establish new organ-specific biomarkers for drug development. The ZeBanC is also a corner stone of COVID-19 research at Charité and BIH. It is involved in the collection of biosamples from COVID-19 patients as well as from healthy Charité employees who have had contact with infected persons. Together with the BIH Clinical Research Unit (CRU), the ZeBanC is responsible for processing and storing the samples. Since 2020, numerous publications have appeared in renowned journals - their results being based on these samples.

Further information and links:

Information portal for sample donors: www.biobanken-verstehen.de