The Key to Curing Cancer?


Biobank software

Cancer is a disease that has plagued society for thousands upon thousands of years. As of 2015, over 1 million new cancer cases have been diagnosed. There are different types/forms it takes on, but each and every version of cancer slowly eats away at the victim until they perish. There are many treatments to help stave it off for a while, especially if warning signs are caught early — but there is no known cure. Whether or not a cancer victim becomes a cancer survivor is almost entirely up to how well their body can hold out and fight.

This was the case, until biorepository management came in.

Biorepository management is conducted with biobanks. A biobank houses the health data of human biological tissue. Blood, saliva, plasma, and purified DNA are examples of the types of biospecimens housed in biobanks, and these biospecimens are basically libraries of the human organism. The biobanks sort these specimens by genetic traits and other traits (age, gender, ethnicity, blood type), as well as by gene-affecting environmental factors (asbestos exposure, radiation exposure, etc). The goal of the research gathered by studying biobank specimens is to discover important information about the genetic component of disease. Since diseases like cancer have genetics that are constantly evolving and changing, the genetic studies from biobanking research are crucial to finally discovering a cure for cancer.

Unfortunately, the technology for biobank research is not universally perfect. In 2011, a survey showed that 47% of over 700 cancer researchers were having trouble with biorepository management — finding biobank laboratory samples of sufficient quality was proving difficult. This was due to the fact that there are still many places with insufficient biorepository software and sample management software. Another issue is the slight taboo around providing samples for biobanks. Although there are over 20 million human tissue samples donated to biobanks each year, there is still a stigma against donating because of the great deal of personal data that human tissue contains. People are concerned about privacy issues. However, labs that utilize biobanks are required to discard information about donors that can be traced from the samples back to them (such as name, location, etc), and donors are provided with agreements that disclose the full details of what biobank research entails.

The more people on board with biorepository research, the better, because society has never come closer to curing cancer since the inception of biobanks. Better biobank software is being developed/used, and donors continue to contribute, but the cause requires for as many people to help out as possible in order to make the road to curing cancer a more quick and efficient one.

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