Establishment of a network-based intra-hospital virtual cancer biobank

There is a growing interest in integrating biomaterial repositories into larger infrastructures in order to meet research demands. However, even for a single hospital or institute, where both population-based and multiple disease-based biobanks have existed for a long time, the integration of existing separate biobanks into a virtual cancer biobank is still challenging. The guidelines and procedures for biobanking are varied and not universally enforced or followed in separate biobanks. Within the last 2 years, we initiated a project to establish a centralized biobank facility in a common storage environment. Analyzing the challenges and interests of stakeholders for the biobanks, a working group comprised of representatives from the central and separate banks, ethic committees, and research administration offices reached an agreement to implement a central facility by following the ISBER best practices for biobanking, and including regular project reviews by the ethical and scientific boards. Furthermore, by implementing a modified minimum information system with biobank data sharing, a network based intra-hospital virtual cancer bank was established to facilitate sharing information of samples held by separate banks. Meanwhile, this virtual biobank network, which has integrated patient information from hospital health care systems, will gradually integrate follow-up information from the cancer registry office and data from epidemiology studies, providing controlled access for sample providers and resource users. In the future, this infrastructure designed for a single hospital may be helpful for building a broader virtual network for data and specimen exchanges.