About this Class

The seminar series is brought to you by NCI’s Biorepositories and Biospecimen Research Branch (BBRB) and addresses current topics in biobanking science, policy and operations. In the era of precision medicine, high quality biospecimens are central to understanding complex diseases, biomarker discovery and unraveling the mechanisms of resistance to therapies. This seminar series is intended to be forward-looking with a focus on improving awareness of best practices for collection of biospecimens and associated data as well as expanding research participation through biobanking.

Our focus for fall/winter 2023 is on the theme of data sharing in biobanking studies and research that uses biospecimens. The seminar by Dr. Sheri Schully is the final talk of a four-part mini-series on this topic.

The All of Us Research Program is enrolling a diverse group of at least 1 million persons in the United States in order to accelerate biomedical research and improve health of individuals and populations. The program aims to make the research results accessible to participants, and it is developing new approaches to generate, access, and make data broadly available to approved researchers. All of Us opened for enrollment in May 2018 and currently enrolls participants 18 years of age or older from a network of more than 340 recruitment sites. Elements of the program protocol include health questionnaires, electronic health records (EHRs), physical measurements, the use of digital health technology, and the collection and analysis of biospecimens, including genetic analysis. To date, the program has enrolled over 700,000 participants with whole genome sequencing data is available to researchers on more than 245,000 participants.