News from our Polish Node

For Polish biobankers, October was a month full of meetings related to biobanking. For the first time in its history, the Polish Node organised a BBMRI-ERIC Management Committee meeting (MC#18), which was held in Wroclaw, the capital city of Lower Silesia.

A few days after the MC meeting, the BBMRI.pl consortium organised the first National Biobanking Conference (which also took place in Wroclaw, from 13 to 14 October 2017). The aim was to get together with the scientific community and other people involved in human biological material biobanking. During the conference, the current BBMRI.pl members presented tasks and benefits of Creation of Polish Biobanking Network BBMRI.pl within BBMRI-ERIC, a project funded by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education. The conference was divided into two parts. The first day saw plenty of lectures and presentations on each stage of the BBMRI.pl project plan, including topics such as creating a biobanking registry, common IT solutions, quality assurance in biobanking, creating a national biobanking node, introducing quality control systems and ELSI aspects. The organisers also dedicated a session to platforms for cooperation between academia and the pharmaceutical industry.

The second day had practical workshops on the following topics: how to design a biobank, creating IT solutions, sharing data, introducing quality assurance systems in biobanks, preparing informed consent and preparing for the new data protection regulations. Participants also had a chance to present their own collections and biobanks during two sessions dedicated to new members of the BBMRI.pl network.