STORES OF GREAT WEALTH

THE TREASURE BIOBANKS HOLD IS MORE PRECIOUS THAN GOLD

- Damien Martin

Any time you make a bank deposit, you're hoping for a nice return. You want a good interest rate, whether it's a savings account or a CD with a longer wait for payoff. The hope is to come away with a little bit more money than you had before.

Making a deposit at the biobank might cost you a bit more up front, in the form of, say, blood or tissue samples. But the payoff both for the donor and for human health in general can be tremendous. As a store of human genes and a source for studying their mysteries, biobanks contain treasures that can make all our lives richer.

TAKING SAMPLES

Biobanks store biological material and health information for patients who voluntarily donate samples, like the more than 135,000 people whose contributions are at the Mass General Brigham Biobank.

They've been used in hundreds of studies covering all manner of physical and mental illness.

"Researchers do studies on the blood samples looking at different biomarkers, which are signals in the blood that can be associated with different diseases, or they might look at genetic data."

Dr. Elizabeth Karlson Principle Investigator Mass General Brigham Biobank

The bank assigns a subject ID number to each patient so their identities are hidden. If researchers find something wrong during a sample study, they can contact the patients to alert them without revealing their identities or compromising the study. The anonymized bioinformation is accessible online to affiliated researchers.

"By integrating all of this data, it improves the research," the biobank's principal investigator Dr. Elizabeth Karlson said.