ISBER Two Decades & Beyond: Honoring Our Past, Celebrating the Present, and Envisioning Our Future

A celebration of two decades:

The history of the International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories (ISBER) is proof of how an important idea, like the development of a society focused on the quality of biobanking, can come to fruition and evolve into existence when there is committed leadership, exceptional staff and interested, experienced and enthusiastic members who are willing to participate in the development and growth of a young and rapidly maturing bioscience that is essential to biomedical research and the sustainability of the environment.

ISBER was created to be an international organization and forum that would address repository management issues, share ideas and expertise, facilitate communication and education, manage biospecimen data, and provide a central voice for biorepositories. The primary goals of the society included education, regulatory inputs, consensus standards and repository accreditation and certifications.

ISBER is proud of its many accomplishments over the past 20 years, but there is still much to be done as ISBER moves forward with strong, supportive management and visionary and thoughtful leadership. ISBER will continue to move from strength to strength and ever-increasing achievement into its third decade as the only global forum that addresses the harmonization of scientific, technical, legal and ethical issues relevant to repositories of biological and environmental specimens.