Quality assurance in cancer biobanking

Biobanking is recognized as a critical area requiring development if progress is to be made in identifying clinically useful markers of disease and disease progression, discovering new drug targets, and understanding the mechanisms of disease in cancer. Researchers continue to report that they are unable to obtain sufficient high-quality, well-annotated samples of diseased and control tissue, blood, and other biological materials. At the same time, funders of research, and especially funders of biobanks, are looking to obtain the best value from their investments in sample and data collection. There is a need to increase the availability to researchers of large numbers of high-quality, well-annotated samples of diseased and control tissue, blood, and other biological materials and, in this way, accelerate cancer research. To do this, samples need to be collected, processed, and stored in standardized ways that give assurance to researchers that they are fit for purpose. Quality assurance is an essential part of good science and this article describes how quality assurance is applied in cancer biobanking and discusses the need for internationally acceptable standards.