Don: Time for another A Moment of Science mailbag. A listener writes:

     Dear AMOS,

     Where do medical scientists get tissue samples for their research? Say if I'm a      neuroscientist studying brain tumors, where would I find enough tumors to study?

Yaël: Great questions. And the answer is that you'd make a withdrawal from a biobank.

D: Right. A biobank is a repository of tissue samples--things like blood, DNA, tumors      and other biological samples. Major research institutions like universities and the      National Cancer Institute have their own biobanks that collect samples from donors      and make them available to researchers.

Y: One problem, though, is that individual biobanks typically don't share their resources      with everyone. For example, the National Cancer Institute has a network of      biobanks. But if you're not doing cancer research or not affiliated with the National      Cancer Institute, it can be hard to access its biobank. Plus, there are no national or      global standards for how biobanks store their material.

D: Y'know, I read that the European Union is building an international biobank network.      It will connect all the biobanks in Europe and make the combined resources available      to researchers around the world.

Y: Some experts think that's what's needed in the United States. They say what we need      is a national database to allow scientists to search the contents of biobanks      throughout North America. And scientists need easy access to tissue samples from      all biobanks.

D: What are the chances of that happening?

Y: Well, biobanks tend to guard their resources pretty closely. But many people think that the best way to cure disease is to make resources available to everyone.  

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