Sample identification and tracking in biobanks

Abstract

Biobanks or bio-repositories facilitate the storage and maintenance of biological samples and data to support discovery of biomarkers, therapeutic targets, and the underlying causes of diseases. Such discoveries require high quality samples that are supported by their associated data. While samples and their data are of crucial importance, they are expensive to collect and maintain. Samples and data are subject to various procedures from data collection from the sample donors, to clinical laboratory analyses, to processing in the research laboratory (omic procedures) and utimately to knowledge discovery.