Biobanking - the future of personalised medicine

April 18, 2011 - PRLog -- In an age of austerity, biobanks are increasing in number; the UK government have committed large sums of money into developing technologies and the US have invested over $1billion dollars in the last ten years. Continuing investment in R&D across the globe suggests that biobanks are going to play a pivotal role in the successful future of drug discovery.

Despite fantastic commercial growth opportunities there are still a number of restrictions which need overcoming. Standardising biobanking procedures and technologies is stunted by a variety of international regulations and a universal set of rules needs to be established in order to move forward. The quality of samples needs addressing to ensure biobanks provide a high level of eminence which will be commonly accepted.  Like a number of other R&D initiatives, biobanks need to continue to attract investment in order to expand and develop, and although investment in this area has been promising, the value of the information stored in biobanks is dependent on this continuing.

The benefits of collaborating biobanks is second to none; a collective approach will undoubtedly speed up the progression of personalised medicines and help counter common diseases on a global scale. As Biobanks expand, the R&D process will become more efficient and provide a better platform for biomarker discovery. Quality management is therefore vital; regulating the frameworks within biobanks will lead to a standardisation in quality of samples. All these issues, and more, will be discussed at SMi’s Biobanking conference; register your attendance today and join a group of likeminded industry professionals to explore the future of biobanking.

SMi have bought together a number of senior academic and industry speakers to focus on the following:

•Enforcing standardisation on a global scale; benefits across the board will be hugely valuable!
•Utilising biobanks for research and development; providing researchers with some much needed direction regarding what the pharmaceutical arena requires
•Regenerative  medicines – putting it all into practice
•Managing biobanks – overcoming current challenges and planning for the future
•Informatics; as good as paper?

Our Key note speakers include:

•Julia Corfield, Biobank Head, AstraZeneca
•Amelia Wall Warner, Head of Pharmacogenomic Clinical Specimen, Merck
•Dr Rivka Ravid, Senior Scientist, Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences, Brain Bank Consultants
•Nigel Spurr, Biomarker Expert, Roche
•Dr Sven Kili, Global Medical Director – Cell Therapy & Regenerative Medicine, Genzyme
•David Pulford, Investigator Genertics Capabilities for EU & Asia / Japan, GlaxoSmithKline

For further information regarding the full speaker line-up, conference programme and the opportunity to register online please visit;

http://www.smi-online.co.uk/bio-banking-event36.asp

Latest registrations include:

**Karolinska Institutet* *Roche Products* *Ipsen* *Marken* *I-path Diagnostics* *Nexus Biosystems**

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SMi have had an established portfolio of Pharmaceutical, Defence, Energy, Finance and PPP/PFI events running since 1993. We are at the forefront of linking businesses with information, organising over 150 Conferences, Workshops and Masterclasses every year. All our events are research driven and highly targeted towards senior level professionals, designed to help you make informed decisions and remain at the cutting edge of business information.