Current concepts in biobanking: development and implementation of a tissue repository.

Biobank repositories are actively contributing to modern medical research. The availability of tissues to researchers has been hampered by the lack of adequately characterized high quality tissues, increasing concerns because of privacy issues and the inability to integrate the follow-up or clinical outcome with the data generated. A properly organized biobanking facility is a critical resource for molecular-based biomedical research. In this article, we provide an overview of the essential steps involved in procuring tissues and storing them. The need to maintain patient privacy and the logistics of sharing tissues with collaborators is discussed. With the advent of the era of personalized medicine, a repository of tissues holds immense promise to provide an improved understanding of the disease process, monitor response to therapy and identify novel drug targets.