By Kevin Moore
Biomarker discovery and development depends critically upon the accessibility and quality of biospecimens. Higher throughput and more integrated approaches for biospecimen management and biobanking are becoming increasingly important to avoid industry bottlenecks, as the number and diversity of samples expands rapidly. The track entitled "Biologics Discovery" at SLAS 2018 will include the session "Biobanking: At the Intersection of Biospecimens and Discovery." We interviewed the chair of the session, Dr. Andy Zaayenga of SmarterLab, to find out more.
The quality of biologics research and development depends on ready access to quality biospecimens. The drive for personalized medicine is fueling scale-up and increased throughput of biomarker discovery. To keep pace and avoid bottlenecks, the need for larger scale, more integrated biospecimen management solutions is growing fast.
"Biospecimens play a key role in biomarker discovery, providing a pathway to personalized medicine," says Dr. Zaayenga. "They also facilitate more efficient and potentially more rapid and less costly drug development."
Biobanks may be population-based or disease-oriented and they may contain a variety of samples such as organ tissue, blood, urine, enzymes, DNA, RNA, and cell lines. Integrating the management of these varied and growing collections presents significant challenges across the sector. This session will focus on the junction of biobanking and drug discovery, and how researchers are exploiting biospecimen-based new candidate identification.
"The session will be particularly valuable to researchers utilizing biospecimens in biomarker and drug discovery, who will benefit by hearing from domain experts in biorepository technology,” he adds.
The session will cover a breadth of topics, featuring “clinical and translational research, genetic analysis, and the migration of biospecimen collections into traditional small molecule collection operations.” Talks will include:
Visit us at SLAS2018 and speak to a Tecan Expert.