Biobanks: can they overcome controversy and deliver on their promise to unravel the origins of common diseases?

摘要

Biobanks can loosely be described as repositories of human biological material and associated health related information for the purposes of biomedical research. The collections of such materials within biomedicine has, of course, a long established history, but what is most distinctive about 'biobanks' is that they tend to be large-scale population collections aimed at linking DNA and health/personal data derived from healthy as well as diseased populations. Such biobanks are presented by their advocates as the next progressive advance to be made following the successful mapping of the Human Genome. It is claimed they have the potential to develop scientific understanding of and therapeutic treatments for common multifac-torial diseases, as well as determining why groups of people have differing reactions to pharmaceutical drugs. Epidemiologists and scientists are able to use such repositories to examine correlations between diseases, genes, and environmental and lifestyle factors to develop an understanding of genetic predispositions towards common diseases and the role played by genes in drug response variations (pharmacogenetics).