Human preclinical and translational research frequently relies upon the availability of quality human biospecimens and associated data. These materials are usually obtained from human tissue banks or biobanks, which are research support facilities located within hospitals, medical research institutes and universities. Despite the importance of human biospecimens in biomedical research, human biobanks frequently report financial sustainability challenges. We have proposed that these sustainability challenges may partly arise from a lack of information about biobank value (1). For a cohort of n=12 cancer biobanks in New South Wales, we performed an in-depth analysis of both annual monetary and in-kind costs and the publications that were supported by each biobank. Biobanks were compared according to their stated biospecimen access policies (n=6 open-access biobanks, n=6 restricted-access biobanks) (2) and their total annual costs (n=6 high-cost biobanks, n=6 low-cost biobanks). Median total costs, staffing and in-kind costs, as well as median numbers and predicted quality metrics of supported publications were similar for open-access and restricted-access cancer biobanks. A significantly higher proportion of the publications supported by open-access biobanks acknowledged the biobank’s contribution. Similar numbers of publications were also supported by high-cost and low-cost biobanks, although high-cost biobanks supported publications with a significantly higher median Journal Impact Factor and Altmetrics score. A significantly higher proportion of the publications supported by high-cost biobanks included biobank staff as co-authors. In summary, our analysis of a small cohort of cancer biobanks identified few differences between the costs and publications supported by open-access versus restricted-access biobanks, whereas greater investments in biobanking were associated with supported publications in more prestigious journals that gained more on-line attention. Our results suggest that the availability of biobank cost and output data will allow more evidence-based approaches to biobank management, improving the capacity of human biobanks to support biomedical research.
(1) Rush A, Catchpoole DR, Ling R, Searles A, Watson P, Byrne JA (2020). More comprehensive measures of biobank value: A step towards improved biobank sustainability? Value in Health, epub ahead of print.
(2) Rush A, Christiansen JH, Farrell JP, Goode SM, Scott RJ, Spring KS, Byrne JA (2015). Biobank classification in an Australian setting. Biopreserv Biobank. 13: 212-8.