Annual World Biobanking Summit 2011 in Hamburg

From June 30th to July 1st, the “Blood Donor BIOBANK” participated in the 3rd annual World Biobanking Summit that was held in the historic city of Hamburg, Germany during the most pleasant season of the year. The conference was part of the European Lab Automation event (ELA 2011). The conference agenda included topics such as blood banking, sample collection and storage technologies, standardization and quality assurance (QA), harmonization, bioethics and regulations for the global biobanking field. Overall, this Summit proved to be a very valuable resource to improve our efforts to address research issues related to the early diagnosis of complex age-dependent diseases. It is becoming increasingly clear that an increased emphasis in developing fields such as epigenetics, environmental exposure, lifestyle and biomarkers is more and more necessary and critical for accelerating clinical discovery.