Next Chapter of the Taiwan Biobank: Sustainability and Perspectives.

Next Chapter of the Taiwan Biobank: Sustainability and Perspectives. Biopreserv Biobank. 2019 Feb 04;: Authors: Lin JC, Chen LK, Hsiao WW, Fan CT, Ko ML Abstract The emergence of biobanks has expanded the scope of biomedical research, ushering in an era of "precision medicine" to improve the treatment of disease. However, biobanks also face sustainability challenges comprising three dimensions-"financial," "operational," and "social." The Taiwan Biobank (TWB), as a large-scale national biobank that supplies valuable phenotypic and genetic information to biomedical researchers on an application basis to investigate the relationship among personal health, genes, lifestyle, environment and diseases of the Taiwanese population, has not been sufficiently explored by researchers. Although the TWB has successfully reached a few milestones since its inception, it faces many sustainability challenges. For the next chapter of the TWB, we propose three strategies to improve sustainability. First, the Ministry of Health and Welfare launched the TWB as an infrastructure project under the leadership of Academia Sinica in 2012. We now believe that it is time that the TWB is transformed into a legal entity as a nondepartmental public body. This would not only ensure efficient, effective, and flexible operation, but would also facilitate cooperation with commercial entities. Second, we suggest that the TWB integrates with other Taiwanese biobanks to ...
Source: Biopreservation and Biobanking - Category: Biomedical Science Tags: Biopreserv Biobank Source Type: research