Biobanks containing human biological samples, such as tissues, blood or body fluids as well as related data are essential resources for the establishment of the function and medical relevance of human genes. Biobanks containing both high quality normal and diseased human tissues are particularly valuable since they contain information on the genetic and epigenetic alterations as well as on modification of gene products that caused a disease and influenced its outcome. Large tissue collections provide insights into the great variability of human diseases and of responses to medical treatment and, therefore, provide an essential basis for the advancement of individualized medicine.

We plan to develop, in an internationally oriented context, one of the largest collections of diseased human tissues already established at the Medical University of Graz to qualify as an OECD Biological Resource Centre specifically designed to support the needs of systems biology approaches to human diseases, of drug discovery, and public health. Since human tissues are a very limited resource, special emphasis will be placed on well-coordinated analysis of samples, allowing in the future the distribution of high quality tissue-derived data rather than original tissues themselves.

The development of GATiB will be guided by experiences obtained from research projects performed in the field of breast cancer and metabolic liver diseases and by investigation of major biobank projects in Europe, USA, Asia, and Australia. Furthermore we will carefully consider the social, ethical and political issues related to GATiB to ensure proper embedding of this important resource at the national and international levels in society.