To fulfil our mission of accelerating the discovery of diagnostics and treatments for neurodegenerative diseases, EPND is developing an accessible, secure, scalable, and sustainable platform to facilitate access to sharing data and samples from across Europe. Biosamples and data must be harmonised and standardised to the highest possible quality for this effort to be successful. To this end, the EPND consortium has published “Best Practices for Biobanking,” a set of standard operating procedures for harmonisation and standardisation of biospecimens.

First, EPND surveyed partners about their current biobanking practices to determine the status quo, in terms of issues related to biospecimen management systems, biospecimen collection and transfer, biospecimen processing, biospecimen storage, quality control and method validation/verification, and biospecimen and data distribution.

Then, based on these responses, the EPND consortium determined standard operating procedures for partners to use in the future based on each of the topics described above. By following these best practices, researchers can ensure that the highest-quality biosamples and data are shared, to further remove barriers and foster collaboration.

For more information, find the full “Best Practices for Biobanking” report here.