Three Editorials from BBMRI.at partners at EBW2024
For this year’s Europe Biobank Week, BBMRI.at partners have provided three interesting pre-conference articles where they describe their research work within BBMRI.at or EU projects with BBMRI.at partner involvement.
Helmuth Haslacher# & Cornelia Stumptner* (BBMRI.at, #MedUni Wien Biobank; *BBMRI.at Coordination/Med Uni Graz)
Quality management is an important issue for BBMRI.at. Since the start of its operation ten years ago, BBMRI.at has developed a nationwide cross-audit programme for its partner biobanks, contributed to ISO and CEN standards for the pre-analytic phase and conducted a survey on user requirements that provided guidance for other BBMRI-ERIC nodes. In its next project period, BBMRI.at partners will continue to work on advancing quality control and harmonizing biobanks.
Ingrid Walter, Monika Wieser (BBMRI.at, VetBiobank)
The VetBiobank ist the only biobank in Austria that collects veterinary specimens. These samples are valuable resources for comparative medicine research: The insight gained from studying animal tissue can benefit humans who suffer from the same disease (e.g. a certain kind of tumor), as well as companion animals like cats and dogs, from which most samples at VetBiobank have been retrieved. As BBMRI-ERIC and BBMRI.at put a strong focus on the One Health approach, the importance of veterinary sample collections are highlighted once again at the congress.
Tanja Kostic# & Cornelia Stumptner#* (#MICROBE project; *BBMRI.at)
The EU project MICROBE, where BBMRI.at partner Med Uni Graz is work package leader, works on the development of technologies, data infrastructures, standardization and ethical and legal guidelines for the biobanking of microbiome samples. The goal is to establish an operational framework for microbiome biobanking in an effort to advance microbiome research and strengthen the One Health approach.
The EBW2024 congress will take place at the Hofburg Vienna from 14-17 May 2024.