Importance of Well-annotated Biospecimen for Clinical Research

Annotated biospecimens in clinical researchMarch 07, 2018

Biobanking plays a critical role in facilitating clinical research. It provides better opportunities for advancing community health by the collection and preservation of biospecimens such as blood, plasma, tissues, and DNA. These biospecimens are then made available for use in research to discover disease biomarkers that can be used to diagnose various phases of diseases, oversee severity of diseases and predicting drug responses. Therefore, availability of high-quality and well-annotated biospecimens is imperative. However, a major roadblock in research is the limited availability of biospecimens and associated clinical data including medical, genealogical, and lifestyle information.