About Medical University of Vienna

As the largest Medical University of Austria and one of the leading medical research institutions in Europe, the Medical University of Vienna looks back on a rich history in medical research, education and patient care. The university is closely related to the Vienna General Hospital (AKH Wien), one of the largest hospitals in the world which is frequented by more than 100,000 inpatient admissions and 540,000 outpatient calls per year. In this context, the Medical University of Vienna is not only able to solve central scientific problems, but also to directly put the latest research evidence into practice. Above that, the university is currently planning specialized research centers for precision medicine, for translational medicine and for technology transfer. The university’s biobank facility operates in a ISO 9001:2015 certified environment as a cooperative project between the Department of Laboratory Medicine, the Department of Pathology, and the Division for Neuropathology and Neurochemistry, harbors more than 3 million prospectively collected, consented aliquots of different biomaterials and shows a substantial growth and a considerable sample turnover.

About MedUni Wien Biobank

MedUni Wien Biobank was founded in 2006 and operates as a cooperative project between the Department of Laboratory Medicine, the Department of Pathology, and the Division of Neuropathology and Neurochemistry in ISO 9001:2015 certified environments (Haslacher et al., 2018). It currently harbors more than 3 million aliquots, which were prospectively collected for research purposes after consent of the respective patient/participant, many of them with compliance to international procedures, as for example the CEN technical specifications/ISO standards on the preexamination phase. Due to its close connection with the AKH Wien, the Biobank covers a broad range of diseases. Moreover, it provides an interface to various analytical facilities at both the General Hospital (diagnostical departments) and the Medical University of Vienna (analytical core facilities). Especially in times of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the Biobank has proven to be a useful partner, not only in planning and executing sample and data logistics within clinical trials, but also as a repository of historical, assured SARS-CoV-2 negative samples. In addition to its role as a service facility, the MedUni Vienna Biobank also sees itself as obliged to generate evidence for the optimal processing of sample material (fitness for purpose). It fulfills this mission not only on its own, but also in multicenter settings (Niedrist et al., 2022).

MedUni Wien Biobank contributes to various national and international research projects (examples below):