Introduction Page

Biobanks are collections of biological materials which are annotated with corresponding data. Medical biobanks typically contain tissues, blood or body fluids collected in research projects, obtained from biopsies for routine diagnostic purposes, from organs surgically removed for treatment of diseases or materials collected at autopsy. Associated with relevant clinical data, they are essential resources for the establishment of the function and medical relevance of human genes (Hirtzlin et al., 2003; Hagen and Carlstedt-Duke, 2004; Cambon-Thomsen, 2004; Asslaber et al., 2007).

Particularly valuable information can be obtained from diseased human tissues, which preserve information on genetic and epigenetic alterations as well as modifications of gene products causing diseases or influencing their outcome. Because of the huge number of biological and medical parameters (e.g., type of disease, treatment, genetic polymorphisms, accompanying disease, life style, etc.) that influence and characterize the disease of individual patients, hundreds to thousands of samples have to be investigated to cope with the biological/medical diversity of humans. Such large tissue collections provide insight into the great variability of human disease manifestations and allow an estimation of the individual's response to medical treatment. Thus, they constitute an essential basis for the advancement of targeted and personalized medicine.

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SPIDIA OPEN WORKSHOP

Standardisation of Sample Pre-Analytics for Molecular Diagnostics and Biomarker Development

In this public workshop scientific background, key activities and main results of the large-scale European FP7 project SPIDIA (Standardisation and improvement of generic pre-analytical tools and procedures for in-vitro diagnostics, www.spidia.eu), a collaboration of 16 leading academic institutions, international organisations and life sciences companies, are presented. This is accompanied by talks and discussions with international experts in the field of biospecimen research, molecular diagnostics and biomarker development.

Scientific Topics include
Critical pre-analytical variables of biological samples
Novel tissue fixation technologies
RNA analysis in blood and tissue samples
Protein and phospho-protein profiles
Metabolomics
Development and validation of molecular biomarkers

Date & Time
Wednesday, October 10th 2012
15:00 - 18:30

Place
Medical University of Graz
Institute of Pathology, Lecture Hall
Auenbruggerplatz 25
8036 Graz
Austria

For further information, please contact
Dr. Christian Viertler
christian.viertler@medunigraz.at

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