The development of biobanks in Australia – which have the potential to fast track research which could save thousands of lives – is being hampered by a lack of public awareness and funding.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the opinion of Jane Carpenter, Australian co-chair of an international conference on biobanking which was held\u00a0earlier this month at Sydney\u2019s Convention and Exhibition Centre.<\/p>\n
Ms Carpenter, who manages the Australian Breast Cancer Tissue Bank headquartered at Westmead Millennium Institute,\u00a0says there is an urgent need to raise public and political awareness of the value of biobanks.<\/p>\n
\u201cBiobanking expedites medical research enormously and reduces health care costs by enabling the practice of\u00a0personalised medicine,\u201d said Ms Carpenter.<\/p>\n
\u201cAn increasing number of treatment decisions are made based on analysis of patient tissue which reduces the incidence of\u00a0patients receiving ineffective therapies.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, biobanks are very expensive to establish and operate and we need new models for sustainable funding.\u201d<\/p>\n
More than 300 biobank representatives from around the world attended the International Society for Biological and\u00a0Environmental Repositories (ISBER) Annual Meeting in Sydney.<\/p>\n
ISBER represents biobanks for a wide range of biological materials such as human tissue and clinical data, as well as\u00a0seeds, grains and animal tissues.<\/p>\n
ISBER estimates that there are now thousands of biobanks globally, ranging from small privately held repositories through\u00a0to huge government institutions and expects their number will grow by another quarter by 2025.\u00a0ISBER President, Kathi Shea, says the biggest challenge was to find ways to co-ordinate and harmonise this rapidly\u00a0growing field.<\/p>\n
\u201cProposed changes to national and international legal and ethical guidelines have the potential to impact biobanking\u00a0collaborations,\u201d said Ms Shea.<\/p>\n
According to Ernst and Young, Australia is the number one biotechnology country in the Asia pacific region and the 6th\u00a0worldwide.<\/p>\n
Westmead Millennium Institute breast cancer researcher, Professor Christine Clarke, says biobanking is vital to\u00a0biotechnology research.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\u201cThe ready availability of high quality biological samples expedites our research enormously but if we had to pay the full\u00a0cost of those samples and their storage they would be unaffordable,\u201d said Professor Clarke.<\/p>\n
The recently released McKeon Review of health and medical research recommended that the Australian Government\u00a0provide \u201csignificant funding\u201d to develop a national biobank hub linking existing and future specimen biobanks.<\/p>\n
Jane Carpenter says it is encouraging that the Review has recognised the key role biobanking now plays in medical\u00a0research and health care.<\/p>\n
\u201cAn important conclusion of the McKeon Review is that Australia fully embed medical research in all aspects of health care\u00a0and we at ISBER believe that it is essential that biobanks are integrated and financially supported within the health care\u00a0system.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The development of biobanks in Australia – which have the potential to fast track research which could save thousands of lives – is being hampered by a lack of public awareness and funding. That\u2019s the opinion of Jane Carpenter, Australian co-chair of an international conference on biobanking which was held\u00a0earlier this month at Sydney\u2019s Convention […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":2446,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"default","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}}},"categories":[19],"class_list":["post-2489","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cat-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wimr.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/2489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wimr.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wimr.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wimr.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wimr.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wimr.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}