Biobanking (5)
Articles specifically regarding biobanking
Biobanking: What to Look for When Choosing a Sample Management System?
Written by AzoBiobanking is a critical factor in both genomic and personalized research, providing cross-purpose access to extremely large datasets—which evidently requires a robust sample management system. Sometimes referred to as a laboratory information management system (LIMS), biobank sample management software is essential in ensuring samples are efficiently controlled and information is managed accurately. But there are now myriad systems available for biological sample management. So, what features should you look for when choosing a sample management system for your biobank operations?
The central tenets of biobanking – data/sample collection, processing, storage, and providing access for researchers – have proven indispensable throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Even before the virus was properly characterised and defined as a coronavirus with a similar morphology to MERS and SARS, biobanks were leveraged for the storage of bronchoalveolar lavage fluids from patients with the as-yet unknown strain of viral pneumonia.
Biobanking is a mainstay in drug discovery, pathology, and personalized medicine. It enables researchers to effectively manage biological sample collections in an easily accessible repository. The benefits of a centralised biobank for studies focussed on particular conditions or for wider, more general research, cannot be overlooked.
If you’re working in a laboratory, be it at a research institute, university, hospital, or a biobank it is possible that you have a large number of legacy samples sitting in your freezers, and you may have no idea what these tubes even contain. We would suggest that legacy samples should be relabelled at least once in their lifetime and often re-labelling becomes inescapable as samples may need to be updated in accordance with that new record keeping systems that you just had installed. Luckily, modern labels incorporate technology to help circumvent the flaws seen in old paper labels.
Ice, Ice Baby (How to remove ice build-up from the bottom of your racks)
Written by David Anstee
One of the most common problems we come across in 2D barcode reading is what to do when you find that your -80 freezer has put a layer of ice crystals on the bottom of your rack of 2D coded tubes. 2D barcode readers are all optical devices – they need to be able to ‘see’ the barcodes on the bottom of the tubes, otherwise they don’t work! Rather than change your tubes to costly alternatives we can show you how to handle this.
