BIOBANC MARBiobanc

The biobank of the Parc de Salut Mar (MARBiobanc) is a public, non-for-profit facility which stores various collections of biological samples available to the whole scientific community. It is organized as a technical unit with regards to quality, order and destination.

It has restricted access facilities which are equipped with the security control mechanisms necessary to ensure the correct storage of the biological samples, their confidentiality and their traceability in accordance with all the Spanish ethical and legal regulations.

The Biobank Service is certified by AENOR to ISO 9001:2008.

Available human biospecimen collections

• DNA bank for cardiovascular diseases

• Cerebral infarction (ictus) sample bank

• FORTIAM, acute myocardial infarction sample collection

• DNA bank for oncological diseases

• Bank of samples from influenza A (H1N1) patients

• Bank of lung disease samples (Lung Biobank Platform)

• Hematological malignancies bank

• Left over diagnose tissue bank

• Cryopreserved tumour bank

• Collection Alzheimer and families (Alfa Study)

• ERyME: Sample collection from patients with rheumatic or muscle-skeletal disease

• GLOSEN: Glomerular diseases sample collection

• Colorectal cancer

Research line collections

• Four new research line collections have been added to the Biobank facility to bemanaged under biobank standards.

Microdissector Laser

The ArcturusXT™ microdissection system offers a combination of infrared (IR) laser capture using standard slides, or a combination of both infrared and ultraviolet (IR and UV) laser, using polyethylene naphthalate (PEN) membrane slides laser enabled.

The instrument has a proprietary combination of a gentle IR laser and a powerful UV laser that work in conjunction to efficiently isolate cells without changing morphology or integrity of the biological content. The IR laser helps to capture the cells of interest, and the UV laser microdissects the captured cells. This is done without affecting the morphology of the cells, and allows for visual inspection of the remaining specimen to help ensure the quality of the sample collected. A wide-slide stage format is available for neurobiology researchers working with very large sections of brain tissue. The petri dish stage insert has opened the door for live-cell microdissection applications such as stem cell research and other rare-cell isolations.

The LCM technique can be used on formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) sections, allowing the use of archival pathological material. In addition, frozen sections of tissue and cytological specimens are also suitable for laser microdissection. The technique causes no apparent alteration to the morphology of the chosen cells, which can be directly visualized after microdissection.

Key features

• Dual laser system-enables a wide range of applications ranging from single-cell isolation to large biopsy extractions

• IR laser capture microdissection preserves morphology of isolated samples and integrity of biological material for downstream applications

• Software enables rapid isolation of specific cells in five simple steps, provides quality control feature that allows users to visualize collected sample

• Flexible sample prep-wide range of slide types and sample preparation formats supported.

Activity

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The Biobank is subscribed to the Biobanks European Quality Control Programme, organized by the IBBL (Integrated Biobank of Luxembourg).

MARBiobanc is the first biobanc of Spain implementing an evaluation way to control samples trasferred to clinical trials and their future uses.

In addition, MARBiobanc reviews all the agreements with the pharmaceutical industry to prevent surpluses being used for unspecified research. This special and urgent system of evaluation guarantees the necessary quickness and control of samples used in clinical trials.

Funding

• Plataforma de biobancos. Instituto de Salud Carlos III/FEDER (PT13/0010/0005).

• Xarxa de bancs de tumors (Network of Tumor Banks-XBTC) sponsored by Pla director d’oncologia de Catalunya (Master Plan for Oncology of Catalonia).

• Grants for the promotion of “empleo joven e implantación de la Garantía Juvenil”: Implementation of new protocols in the Biobank: cryopreservation, immortalization, microdissection. PEJ-2014-A-40109. MINECO.

Diffussion

• MARBiobanc Website.

This website is operational since June 2016, and has received a total of 1.441 from June to December. The pages most visited are in Spanish Language, followed by English. Regarding the origin of searches, 59% are from Spain, followed in number of visits to the UK and Russia.

• Organization Day MARBiobanc Present and Future

For the 5 anniversary of MARBiobanc, the conference  “Biobanks Present and Future” was organized  by the biobank on June 13th, 2016. There were more than 100 attendees, representatives of all the biobanks in Catalonia.

• Donors diffusion

Biobank started collaboration with the Reference Laboratory of Catalonia. In October, a diffusion campaign began in the extractions laboratory by a poster and giving information to patients/donors.