Prof. Dr. Thomas Illig

Next Generation Biobanking

"Advances in the “omics” field bring about the need for a high number of good quality samples. Additionally the access to high quality biosamples and related clinical data is a basic prerequisite for advanced biomedical research. Many omics studies take advantage of biobanked samples to meet this need. Most of the laboratory errors occur in the pre-analytical phase. Therefore evidence-based standard operating procedures for the pre-analytical phase as well as markers to distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ quality samples taking into account the desired downstream analysis are urgently needed. Advances in analytical biochemistry have recently made it possible to obtain global snapshots of metabolism. Especially the combination of different molecular omics techniques shows major differentiations in the metabolic make-up of the human population. Metabolites may subscribe the risk for a certain medical phenotype, the response to a given drug treatment, the reaction to a nutritional intervention, or environmental challenge. This presentation combines data about biobanking procedures and routines in a big professional clinical biobank and combines it with biobanking research with modern high-throughput data."