Introduction
According to the definition of the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2001,
the biobank is a biological application system for the clinical
treatment of diseases and the research of life sciences, in which all
kinds of human biological materials are stored
intensively.1 The purpose of biobank is to collect
biological information of specific population, and then to use these
biological information to carry out medical scientific
researches2. There is no doubt that biobanks play a
very important role in medical scientific
researches.
Biobanks have developed rapidly in recent
years, and many countries have established their own biobanks. The
large-scale and famous biobanks in the world mainly include UK Biobank,
Danish National Biobank, Biobanks of the Biobanking and BioMolecular
Resources Research In frastructure-European Research Infrastructure
Consortium (BBMRI-ERIC), and China Kadoorie
Biobank3-6. At the same time, there are more and more
researches on biobank7,8. Biobanking research has
become commonplace even in low- and middle-income countries
(LMICs)9. China has established a national biobank
since 1994. Since then, the construction of biobank has been booming in
China. There are more and more biobanks in China, and some large-scale
biobanks which is established by national clinical research centers
appears. However, there are still many problems in the development of
biobanks in China, such as small scale, few samples of healthy people,
insufficient utilization, unshareable resources, backward information
construction, and lack of relevant standards and operational
specifications.
In this study, we will focus on a clinical
biobank of a research-oriented hospital in China. In research-oriented
hospital, clinical research is as important as clinical diagnosis and
treatment, and clinical research is one of the most important tasks in
the development of clinical disciplines. So, as an important platform
and resource of clinical research, clinical biobank may play an
important role in the development of clinical
disciplines10. In the meantime, clinical disciplines
may also play a key role in the development of clinical biobank.
However, there is no research on the relationship of clinical biobank
and clinical disciplines. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to
understand the differences between different clinical disciplines in the
development of clinical biobank, and to explore the relationship of
clinical biobank and clinical
disciplines.