Biobanking of Human Biospecimens

Pierre Hainaut, Ph.D., is Professor of Cancer Biology and holds a Chair of Excellence in Translational Cancer Research at University Grenoble-Alpes, France. As head of Molecular Carcinogenesis at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC, World Health Organization, Lyon, France), he has led the development of international standards for biobanking in the fields of molecular epidemiology and pathology, and has been involved in many projects implementing biomarkers in international molecular epidemiological studies in Africa, Asia or Latin America. Currently, he is the Director of the Institute for Advanced Biosciences, a joint research center of the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM), National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and Université Grenoble-Alpes, dedicated to Epigenetics, Chronic Diseases and Cancer. He is also responsible for Molecular Diagnosis of Cancer at the University Hospital of Grenoble-Alpes, France. His research focuses on TP53 mutations and on biomarkers of transition from chronic diseases to cancer.

Jim Vaught, Ph.D., spent 14 years at the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI), most recently as the Chief of the Biorepositories and Biospecimen Research Branch (BBRB) in the Cancer Diagnosis Program.   He’s one of the founding members of the International Society for Biological & Environmental Repositories (ISBER) and was its second President. He has provided biobanking consulting services to a variety of? ? international? organizations, ?and? serves on a number of biobank advisory groups.  He was Senior Editor for Biospecimens and Biorepositories for the AACR journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention and is the  Editor-in-Chief of Biopreservation and Biobanking, the official journal of ISBER.  He is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the International Prevention Research Institute (Lyon).  Dr. Vaught is the immediate Past-President of ISBER and a member of the Board of Directors.  

Kurt Zatloukal, MD, is Professor of Pathology at the Medical University of Graz. He coordinated the preparatory phase of a European biobanking and biomolecular resources research infrastructure (BBMRI) within the 7th EU framework programme, and is the National Node Director of BBMRI. His research fields are molecular pathology of liver diseases and cancer, and the development of biobanking technologies.