What are biobanks? How can you donate biosamples? How do biobanks contribute to everyone's health? These and other questions are answered by a Germany-wide campaign that has been providing information about biobanks in many German university hospitals since May 2018.
Under the leadership of the German Biobank Node (GBN), biobanks from eleven German university hospitals have joined forces to raise awareness of biobanks and better communicate their importance for science to the public.
To this end, GBN has developed information material that answers the most important questions about biobanks and their applications.
"Patients and test persons who donate biosamples make an important contribution to science and research," says Prof Dr Michael Hummel, GBN coordinator, explaining the background to the campaign. "With this website and the information material, we want to contribute to greater transparency and participation and demonstrate the inestimable value of patient donations for the development of new therapies."
The impetus for the information campaign was a survey of sample donors, which showed that the majority of donors had only a vague idea of what a biobank is and what their biosample donation is used for, despite the mandatory information provided by trained study personnel. However, the patients and test subjects surveyed were very interested in science and research. GBN would like to fulfil this wish with its information offer.