The Dutch government has awarded a consortium of health research groups 22.5 million euro to establish a national biobanking infrastructure. The project, Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources Infrastructure Netherlands (BBMRI-NL), will integrate valuable clinical data and material in order to improve access to human samples.
This project will attempt to improve the accessibility and enrichment of biological and clinical data while exercising privacy protection regulations. The initiative is part of a wider 170m euro network that will eventually link European biobanks and related information resources to connect researchers across the continent.
Eight university medical centres and several other research institutes and universities are participating in the project. Professor Gertjan van Ommen, from Leiden University Medical Centre in the Netherlands, applied for the grant from the Dutch Ministry of Education through the Netherlands Organisation of Scientific Research. He believes that the integration of data and materials will accelerate research into causes and development, therapy and prevention of disease.
