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Great Lakes Biorepository Research Network's Annual Biobanking Symposium: A Focus on Precision Medicine.

Each fall, biobank professionals in Michigan anticipate the Great Lakes Biorepository Research Network (GLBRN) annual scientific symposium, held to promote collaborations and research opportunities and the sharing of biobanking expertise and experiences. The University of Michigan (U-M) and the U-M Medical School Central Biorepository, promoting the theme ‘‘Biospecimen Collections and Biobanking in the Era of Precision Medicine,’’ hosted the 2018 symposium. Over 100 registrants originating mainly from the GLBRN host institutions attended the meeting. The format of the meeting consisted of two keynote speakers, Jonathan Keats, PhD, and Dave Chesla, BSc, MHA, PAASCP, AAPA, HT, who spoke on the topics of multiple myeloma genetics and the ‘‘All of Us’’ initiative, respectively. This was followed by four workshops centered on the Key Elements of Biobanking, Oncologic Tissue Procurement, Informed Consent, and Quality Management. This report provides highlights and key learning messages of the symposium. The GLBRN began with four Michigan institutions (William Beaumont Health System, Van Andel Research Institute (VARI), U-M, and Michigan State University in November 2013 during the William Beaumont’s Annual Biobank Symposium. Recently St. Joseph Mercy Health, Ann Arbor, joined as the fifth institutional member (Fig. 1). The rationale for the GLBRN was to improve collaboration opportunities for researchers, focus on improved quality assurance/quality control for biobank-related science, sustainability, and to develop an active interaction among peer biobanking groups. The GLBRN is a voluntary engagement to build a ‘‘grass root’’-based organization. The organization grew organically, without external funding, and aspired to be an interactive and efficient network. One goal was to improve research by collaborating with participating institutions to provide human samples that would promote investigatordriven research as well as an opportunity to enhance management of the biobanks. The encouragement to distribute stored biospecimens is ongoing and offers the opportunity using a MOU/UBMTA-based institutional agreement to minimize barriers for the transfer of biospecimens to researchers from member institutions. However, plans to spend more time as like-minded biobankers as a resource and educational cooperative for biorepositories on a regional effort are now the primary focus of the GLBRN. The GLBRN agreement provides advantages, as a legal document signed by the respective institutions to forge common goals, procedures, and processes developed by the institutions’ biobanks, while no longer being the sole guiding principle for the members to interact. The GLBRN activity is a simple structure of interaction and contribution that any institute or research center can join by agreeing to support the set of guiding principles. Principles include the MOU/UBMTA agreement, common elements of informed consent for the collection of biospecimens, an annual informational meeting, consortium conference calls, and use and notification of materials from the GLBRN website.