Review: BBMRI.at Annual Meeting – productive exchange with Scientific and Ethical Advisory Board

Every year the entire BBMRI.at team meets with the Scientific and Ethical Advisory Board (SEAB), representatives from the University rectorates and from the Austrian Ministry of Education, Science and Research BMBWF at the Annual BBMRI.at SEAB & ACP Meeting in Vienna. Aim was to present the progress made during the past year with respect to the BBMRI.at 5-year work programme (2023-2028). This year new experts joined as SEAB members and extended the boards expertise in alignment with the topics of the new BBMRI.at work programme.

The comprehensive agenda for the day included an update on BBMRI-ERIC Director General of BBMRI-ERIC, and an introduction and report on the overall progress of BBMRI.at by Georg Göbel, BBMRI.at National Node Director, and Cornelia Stumptner, BBMRI.at Executive Manager.

Subsequently leaders of every Work Package provided an update on their achievements and gave an outlook on the next year. The presentation covered for example:

• The analysis of the IT and data/database landscape at BBMRI.at partner biobanks (by Georg Göbel, leader of WP1 Datafication).
• The establishment of a BBMRI.at Legal Helpdesk (for consortium partners) and a Legal Knowledge Base on the BBMRI.at website (accessible for a broader community) (by Nikolaus Forgo, leader of WP2 Legal Challenges).
• The continuation of BBMRI.at biobank cross-audits, participation in ring-trials, and first preparative work towards validation of biobanking processes (by Helmuth Haslacher, leader of WP3 Quality Management).
• An overview on potential emissions of biobanks, methods to calculate the environmental impact, and suggestions for improvement (by Monika Valjan, leader of WP4 Enviromental Responsibilities).
• Activities for raising awareness on the potential of veterinary (clinical) biobanks and their samples/data collections, particularly with respect to the ‘One Health’ approach and comparative medicine (by Ingrid Walter, leader of WP5 Veterinary Biobanks).
• Examples how BBMRI.at serves as a platform for interaction with (inter)national programmes and initiatives relevant for biobanking. (E.g. interaction with ISO and CEN standardization bodies, the Austrian EIRENE RI hub “Exposome Austria”, the Human Biomonitoring Platform, or EU projects such as MICROBE (microbiome biobanking), GenomeMET (reference materials), and Bigpicture (digital pathology). (by Cornelia Stumptner, leader of WP6 Coordination)

The day continued with flash reports by the Austrian university biobanks.

All presentations were followed by insightful discussions and valuable exchanges with the SEAB and The meeting concluded with a feedback from the SEAB on the current work & recommendations for the future periods.

BBMRI.at is consistently aims to establish a biobanking infrastructure which optimizes a close partnership and cooperation between biobanks in Austria and internationally. To achieve those goals the BBMRI.at SEAB members serve as crucial advisors for BBMRI.at.