Construction of a business model to assure financial sustainability of biobanks

Critical Financial Challenges for Biobanking: Report of a National Cancer Institute Study

BACKGROUND

Researchers and other key stakeholders in biobanking often do not have a thorough understanding of the true costs and challenges associated with initiating, running, and maintaining a biobank. The National Cancer Institute's Biorepositories and Biospecimen Research Branch (BBRB) commissioned the Biobanking Financial Sustainability survey to better understand the challenges that biobanks face in supporting ongoing operations. A series of interviews with biobanking managers and an international focus group session informed the content of the survey.

METHODS

The design of the survey included five main sections, each containing questions related to primary topics as follows: general demographics, operations, funding sources, costs, and financial challenges. While the survey focused on financial issues and challenges, it also explored staffing and strategic planning as these issues relate to the sustainability of operations and financial support. U.S. and international biobanks were included in the survey.

RESULTS

Biobanks in general are dependent on public funding and most biobanks do not have formal plans for the long-term stewardship of their collections. Respondents are working at a critical level of personnel and are not in a position to further reduce staffing. Smaller biobanks in particular need assistance in defining reasonable cost recovery user fees for biospecimens and related services.

CONCLUSIONS

The survey results highlight several issues that are important for long-term biobank sustainability. It is critical to prepare for such issues as effective biobanking practices have increasingly been recognized as a key component for the advancement of precision medicine.

Advancing Professionalization of Biobank Business Operations: A Worldwide Survey

Quality specimens from biobanks are key resources to support reproducible research. Sustaining biobanks requires robust management. We recently published a pilot survey that indicated that over half the participating biobanks had business plans in place and another third were working on business planning. While the results provided a clue to the status of business planning in biobanking, it was concluded that a longer and more in-depth survey and analysis were required. In April 2017, an extended survey was distributed worldwide in English, French, Chinese, German, and Spanish, through multiple channels. The survey was built using the Survey Monkey tool. Our hypothesis was that those biobanks that already have a business plan also have a more professional management structure. The questions were designed to understand more details about each biobank's business operations and communications. A total of 276 biobanks participated (China 65, France 40, United States 34, Spain 27, Germany 24, Australia 23, and rest of the world 63). About two thirds of the biobanks were established in the last 10 years. The responses provided data on the size of biobanks answering the survey, their status of business planning, and how and through what mediums they are communicating with customers. Biobanks with a business plan or preparing to have one showed a clear trend of having a customer strategy for marketing the samples and communicating with customers. No trend could be seen regarding websites and activities in social media. We confirmed our hypothesis that biobanks that have or are in the process of preparing a business plan are showing a trend toward more professional structures. In the biobanking community, the business mind-set and use of the business plan as a management tool have not quite arrived.

A new viewpoint: running a nonprofit brain bank as a business

It has become clear over the past decades that studying postmortem human brain tissue is one of the most effective ways to increase our knowledge of the pathogenesis and etiology of neuropathologic and psychiatric diseases. Many breakthroughs in neuroscience have depended on the availability of human brain tissue. However, the process of brain banking presents many different challenges, including the high cost that is associated with collecting the samples and with providing the diagnostics, storage, and distribution. Funding is generally from research and facility grants and donations but all are irregular, uncertain, and only cover the costs for a determined period of time. For professional brain banks with extensive prospective donor programs and that are open-access it can be very beneficial to draft a business plan to achieve long-term sustainability. Such a business plan should identify the interests of the stakeholders and address the implementation of cost efficiency and cost recovery systems.

Biobanking-Budgets and the Role of Pathology Biobanks in Precision Medicine

Biobanks have become an important component of the routine practice of pathology. At the 2016 meeting of the Association of Pathology Chairs, a series of presentations covered several important aspects of biobanking. An often overlooked aspect of biobanking is the fiscal considerations. A biobank budget must address the costs of consenting, procuring, processing, and preserving high-quality biospecimens. Multiple revenue streams will frequently be necessary to create a sustainable biobank; partnering with other key stakeholders has been shown to be successful at academic institutions which may serve as a model. Biobanking needs to be a deeply science-driven and innovating process so that specimens help transform patient-centered clinical and basic research (ie, fulfill the promise of precision medicine). Pathology’s role must be at the center of the biobanking process. This ensures that optimal research samples are collected while guaranteeing that clinical diagnostics are never impaired. Biobanks will continue to grow as important components in the mission of pathology, especially in the era of precision medicine.

Business Planning in Biobanking: How to Implement a Tool for Sustainability

Worldwide, the sustainability of public health systems is challenged by the increasing number and cost of personalized therapies. Quality biological samples stored in biobanks are essential for the provision of appropriate health services and also act as a reservoir for the development of precision medicine and biotechnological innovation. Economic sustainability is a crucial factor in the maintenance of biobanking activities. Traditionally, management of biobanking is performed by health researchers and/or clinicians whose knowledge of economic issues is inadequate. On the other hand, familiarity with financial instruments used by economists is not often accompanied by a consolidated understanding of biobanking features. This article aims to be a guide for the implementation of business plans in biobanking and proposes models for the facilitation of their preparation, thus contributing to recognition of the importance of efficient management of resources of public health services.

Biobank Finances: A Socio-Economic Analysis and Review

This socio-economic study is based on the widely held view that there is an inadequate supply of human biological samples that is hampering biomedical research development and innovation (RDI). The potential value of samples and the associated data are thus not being realized. We aimed to examine whether the financing of biobanks contributes to this problem and then to propose a national solution. We combined three methods: a qualitative case study; literature analysis; and informal consultations with experts. The case study enabled an examination of the complex institutional arrangements for biobanks, with a particular focus on cost models. For the purposes of comparison, a typology for biobanks was developed using the three methods. We found that it is not possible to apply a standard cost model across the diversity of biobanks, and there is a deficit in coordination and sustainability and an excess of complexity. We propose that coordination across this diversity requires dedicated resources for a national biobanking distributed research infrastructure. A coordination center would establish and improve standards and support a national portal for access. This should be financed centrally by public funds, possibly supplemented by industrial funding. We propose that: a) sample acquisition continues to be costed into projects and project proposals to ensure biobanking is driven by research needs; b) core biobanking activities and facilities be supported by central public funds distributed directly to host public institutions; and c) marginal costs for access be paid for by the user.

Sustainability in a Hospital-Based Biobank and University-Based DNA Biorepository: Strategic Roadmaps

Sustainability in the biobanking community has recently become an important and oft-discussed issue as biorepositories struggle to balance limited external funding and complex cost recovery models with high operating costs and the desire to provide the highest quality materials and services to the research community. A multi-faceted view of biobanking sustainability requires consideration of operational and social sustainability in addition to the historical focus exclusively on financial sustainability. Planning and implementing this three pillar model creates a well-rounded biorepository that meets the needs of all the major stakeholders: the funders, the patients/depositors, and the researcher recipients. Often the creation of a detailed business plan is the first step to develop goals and objectives that lead down a path towards sustainability. The definition of sustainability and the complexity of a sustainable business plan may differ for each biorepository. The DNASU Plasmid Repository at Arizona State University stores and distributes DNA plasmids to researchers worldwide, and the Biobank Core Facility at St. Joseph's Hospital and Barrow Neurological Institute consents patients and collects, stores, and distributes human tissue and blood samples. We will discuss these two biorepositories, their similar and different approaches to sustainability and business planning, their challenges in creating and implementing their sustainability plan, and their responses to some of these challenges. From these experiences, the biobanks share lessons learned about planning for sustainability that are applicable to all biorepositories.

Biobanks in Oral Health: Promises and Implications of Post-Neoliberal Science and Innovation

While biobanks are established explicitly as scientific infrastructures, they are de facto political-economic ones too. Many biobanks, particularly population-based biobanks, are framed under the rubric of the bio-economy as national political-economic assets that benefit domestic business, while national populations are framed as a natural resource whose genomics, proteomics, and related biological material and national health data can be exploited. We outline how many biobanks epitomize this 'neoliberal' form of science and innovation in which research is driven by market priorities (e.g., profit, shareholder value) underpinned by state or government policies. As both scientific and political-economic infrastructures, biobanks end up entangled in an array of problems associated with market-driven science and innovation. These include: profit trumping other considerations; rentiership trumping entrepreneurship; and applied research trumping basic research. As a result, there has been a push behind new forms of 'post-neoliberal' science and innovation strategies based on principles of openness and collaboration, especially in relation to biobanks. The proliferation of biobanks and the putative transition in both scientific practice and political economy from neoliberalism to post-neoliberalism demands fresh social scientific analyses, particularly as biobanks become further established in fields such as oral health and personalized dentistry. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first analysis of biobanks with a view to what we can anticipate from biobanks and distributed post-genomics global science in the current era of oral health biomarkers.