Christina Ellervik
Boston Children's Hospital, USA
Title: Pre-analytical variables in fluid biospecimen biobanking
Biography
Biography: Christina Ellervik
Abstract
Most errors in a clinical chemistry laboratory are due to preanalytical errors. Preanalytical variability of biospecimens can have significant effects on downstream analyses, and controlling such variables is therefore fundamental for the future use of biospecimens in personalized medicine for diagnostic or prognostic purposes. Currently, such preanalytical variables are not routinely documented in the biospecimen research literature. The focus of the presentation will be on preanalytical variables affecting human biospecimen integrity in biobanking, such as biological and environmental factors, collection, processing, storage, transport and retrieval. The impact of such variables on the integrity of the biospecimens as well as the interpretation of downstream analyses, costs, and FDA requirements will be discussed. It will be discussed how knowledge of preanalytical variable effects can prevent the need to waste the time and costs of repeating sample collections.