DNA Biobanking In Olmsted County, A Deliberative Community Engagement

What is a Biobank?

Biobanks-collections of biological materials and information

The term "biobank" can refer to many different types of collections of biological materials and information - from plant seed banks to collections of cancer biopsy samples in hospitals. In short, a biobank is any large collection of biological samples linked to information.

Human biobanks and research

In our community engagement, we will focus mainly on human biobanks that are used in research. These can contain many different types of biological samples (e.g., tissue samples, DNA, and blood) and information (e.g., health records, diet and lifestyle information, family history of disease, sex, age, or ethnicity). Since biobanks are complex and expensive to maintain, their funding may come from public, private, or mixed sources, and for now, their legal regulation varies widely from place to place.

Two common ways of organizing samples for research are by disease and by population. If you want to see what other major biobanks look like, here are examples:

• Norwegian Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Registry is an example of a disease-based biobank. It contains samples and information from MS patients and aims to find new treatments for the disease.
• UK Biobank is an example of a population biobank. It aims to collect samples and information from 500,000 British people and to help researchers learn about the complex relationships between genes, lifestyle, environment, and disease.
• Marshfield Clinic Biobank An example of a regional biobank can be found at our neighbor, the Marshfield Clinic in Wisconsin. The Marshfield Clinic biobank is also a private collection of DNA samples designed to aid in scientific research. The Marshfield Clinic biobank has four Advisory Boards, one of which is made up of community members who help oversee the research.

Besides samples collected by medical and research institutions, there are many other groups that collect DNA. Law enforcement agencies also maintain large collections of DNA for use in criminal investigations.

Mayo Clinic's plan

Currently, there are collections of tissue and DNA samples stored at Mayo Clinic for many different purposes. Most of the collections have focused on specific diseases, like cancer, heart disease, or diabetes. Now, Mayo Clinic would like to plan for a centralized biobank that will bring together the samples that have already been collected, as well as collect new samples. This biobank would include DNA samples from all sorts of people, including 20,000 healthy people. Information from these 20,000 people can be compared with DNA samples from people with diseases to try to find differences in their genes. The biobank will be a good place for storage, processing, access, and sharing DNA samples, making it much easier for doctors and scientists to make use of and share these resources.