Get Involved in ISBER Special Interest Groups

The quantity of environmental and biological specimens and derivatives is rising and will continue to do so. Automation of the processes to collect, prepare, distribute, and archive the materials and the data associated with those materials becomes compelling as laboratory operations increase. Interoperability and facile exchange of specimens and data between collections is critical. Automated repositories present challenging issues with regards to design, sample process, data process and labware. The repository management industry is at a juncture where establishment of automation guidelines will greatly accelerate future development.

The goals of this special interest group include:

1. Determine appropriate automation strategies as throughput requirements increase.
2. Explore process and laboratory operations to ascertain where standardization of protocols including labware is warranted to effect efficient automation.
3. Propose automation pathway recommendations to ISBER Best Practices guidelines.

Co-Chair: Andy Zaayenga, SmarterLab, and Jeffery Meyer Mayo Clinic Bioservices.

The ISBER Pediatric Special Interest Group focuses on pediatric biobanking specific issues and aims to provide leadership in the area of pediatric biobanking, develop pediatric biobanking guidelines and foster collaborations.

The goals of this special interest group include:

1. Increase awareness of pediatric specific biorepositories
2. Identify issues that are specific to pediatric biobanking such as third party consent, vulnerable populations, small sample size, and provide a forum to discuss opportunities and possible solutions
3. Develop a platform to exchange best practices related to biobanking of pediatric samples
4. Enable collaborations and create networks to increase availability of pediatric sample cohorts
5. Public dissemination of our group’s findings to the international biobanking community

Chair: Rania Labib

The ISBER Cryopreservation Science Special Interest Group focuses on promote the research of novel cryopreservation technologies in ISBER for biopreservation and biobanking, bridge the science and the practice in cryopreservation, and foster the collaborations among researchers and practitioners.

Chairs: Dayong Gao (Chair), Jason Acker (Co-Chair), Zhiquan Andy Shu (Co-Chair)

Rare diseases are a clinically heterogeneous group of about 7,000 disorders which are mostly genetic in origin. Rare diseases affect mostly children which is commonly diagnosed during childhood and often have deleterious long term effects. Their cumulative public concern around the world is substantial. Unfortunately, only around small portion of these disorders have an effective drug therapy. To expand our scientific knowledge of these disorders, increased efforts is needed to invest on initiatives addressing obstacles in children participation in research, including collection and access to pediatric samples.

The goals of this special interest group include:

1. Identify researchers using rare samples to facilitate collaboration and lessons learned
2. Promote the use of rare disease biobanks. Share successful use cases
3. Communicate and coordinate with different organizations and conference organizers to include rare disease issues on their agenda (to include presentations, discussion panels posters and publication)
4. Identified rare disease patient registries that maintain sample collection/biobank
5. Disseminate news, events, knowledge, publications pertaining to rare diseases
6. Foster patient engagement in specimen donation, and the consent process
7. Improve access to donated specimens from patients seen at different sites/hospitals (successful use cases)

Chair: Yaffa Rubinstein, National Library of Medicine