Biobanking as the cornerstone for translational research

Description

The covid-19 pandemic has made the strengths of biobanks and research partnership even more prominent. The availability of stored positive samples combined with other biological samples and clinical data from the same individuals will enable unprecedented host-pathogen genetics studies. The large number of samples collected from covid-19 serology studies can potentially be used in conjunction with epidemiological data and general health data to elucidate factors relevant for studying covid-19 immunity.

These factors combined makes biobanks and large datasets attractive to both academia and industry. In the recent years several drugs have been developed based on genetic discoveries from biobank material. This availability of large-scale datasets from biological material is very attractive for the pharmaceutical industry and has led to increased funding from industry partners for large scale genetic projects. All in all there is an increasing focus on public-private partnerships.

With this biobank symposium, we will bring together world leading biobanks and researchers and discuss how we can use innovative approaches and expanded cooperation with the pharmaceutical industry to improve health care.

Keynote speakers

• Ruth Loos, NNF Center for Basic Metabolic Research, University of Copenhagen: "The Precision Health Cohort - Multi-omics approach to understand metabolic response to food and physical activity"
• Aarno Palotie, Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland, University of Helsinki: "FinnGen - Discovering novel gene targets in FinnGen"
• Alastair Kent: "Patient advocacy - The Patient and Family Contribution to BioBanking"

The two day symposium will be held at Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen with a mixture of classical talks, poster sessions, networking and social activities.

Programme

The symposium programme is available here: Biobanking as the cornerstone for translational research

List of speakers

• Eva Ortega-Paíno, Spanish National Cancer Research Centre, Spain and Lasse Boding, Danish National Biobank, Statens Serum Institut
• Charlotte Cecil, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry & Department of Epidemiology. Erasmus Medical Centre, The Netherlands
• Karina Meden Sørensen, Danish National Biobank, Statens Serum Institut
• Markus J. Herrgård, Bioinnovation Institute
• Michaela Mayrhofer, BBMRI-ERIC, Austria
• Pilar Nicolás, Faculty of Law, University of the Basque Country, Spain
• Antti Piirainen, FINDATA, Social and Health Data Permit Authority, Finland
• Lars Werner, Danish Psoriasis Association
• Lisa Bredgaard, Danish Ministry of Health