Innovative biotech use cases at the National Biobank workshop

On September 2, a digital workshop was held to further develop the concept of a national biobank. The aim of the initiative, involving around 50 participants from research and industry, is to create a service-oriented one-stop-shop platform that will provide public and private research institutions with central access to decentralized bio samples and sequenced data.

BIO Deutschland was involved in the workshop through two member companies with specific application examples: Kirsten Tief-Kuery (Thermo Fisher Scientific) presented a project that is being carried out in cooperation with other pharmaceutical companies on the basis of the UK Biobank. The use case illustrates how structured biobank research can lead to reliable findings in drug development. The use case illustrates how structured biobank research can lead to reliable findings in drug development. Marco Schmidt (Biotx.ai) presented a use case in which  the UK and Estonian biobanks were used to identify clues to a potential active ingredient for ADHD.

BIO Deutschland expressly supports efforts to establish a national biobank infrastructure in Germany. For biotechnology companies, simplified access to high-quality biosamples and data is a key foundation for research and development.

That is why BIO Deutschland, together with the Network University Medicine (NUM), the German Biobank Network (GBN), the pharmaceutical associations vfa and BPI, the Fraunhofer Society, the Association of the Diagnostics Industry (VDGH), German University Medicine, and TMF – Technology and Methods Platform for Networked Medical Research e. V. to develop a comprehensive concept for biobanks. The press release (in German) can be found here: https://www.biodeutschland.org/de/pressemitteilungen/konzept-zeigt-weg-zu-neuer-biobank- plattform.html?year=2025