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8.3. FROM BIOMARKERS TO BIOPRINTS 171
smaller biobanks as well as existing epidemiological studies rebranding
themselves as “biobanks” (Gibbons et al., 2007).
� Corporate-held biobanks involve the collection of tissue samples and clinical
data by pharmaceutical companies and clinical research organizations
from clinical trial subjects. Opposed to the population-based
biobanks, the corporate biobanks are not as well documented or scrutinized
by ethicists, lawyers or social scientists (Corrigan and Williams-
Jones, 2006). This can be partly explained by the fact that details about
these biobanks are commercially sensitive and therefore mostly kept secret.
There is evidence that pharmaceutical companies such as Novartis,
Roche and Pfizer have been routinely collecting biological samples from
clinical trials and have created large repositories of tissues with assigned
patient information (Lewis, 2004).
� Disease specific biobanks which are established by disease advocacy organizations
with the aim of producing therapies for people with rare
genetic conditions. One of the earliest examples is PXE International
(Terry et al., 2007) collecting tissues and patient information of people
affected by the rare genetic disorder of pseudoxanthona elasticum
(Zarbock et al., 2007).
Biobanks as a basis for better drug development
Biobanks have been part of what has been called the biotechnology revolution
(Nightingale and Martin, 2004) - a view that was shared by governments,
academics and industry. In short, it was believed that significant benefit would
come from genomics and biotechnology (by using these biobanks) for drug
development, healthcare and the economy in general. This was one of the
main reasons for governmental support in the creation of large populationbased
biobanks.
Thus, the central expectation of biobank research is that it will enhance
diagnosis, prevention and treatment of diseases, leading to an improvement in
the health of the general population and in particular subgroups. This hope
is based on the main assumption that analysis of biobanks will lead to better
understanding of diseases which is usually coupled to the identification of
biomarkers for a particular disease. There is no doubt that the establishment
of cooperative human tissue banks or research networks can greatly facilitate
the large-scale validation of biomarkers.
8.3 From Biomarkers to Bioprints: Enabling Information-Based
Medicine
The concept of personalized medicine embodies the belief that a drug is not
simply effective or ineffective. Rather, it is likely to be more effective in
some people and less effective or even harmful in others. Thus, personalized
medicine can improve the potential for successful, sophisticated evaluation of
the balance of risk and benefit. The promise of genomics and proteomics is
largely built on the theory that these technologies will enable us to judge these
risk and benefit consideration using much smaller, focused groups of patients
than before. As a consequence, the concept of single-source biomarkers (e.g.
just a genomic SNP or just proteomics peptide modification) used to make