Unravelling the causes of complex diseases and translating these efforts into public health and clinical practice are primary goals of biomedicine. It has become well recognized that conducting the high-throughput and interdisciplinary science underlying this agenda is heavily reliant on access to large-scale biobanks of wide geographic span which curate a rich array of data including genotypes, other biomarkers, clinical measures, environmental exposures, life-style and social factors plus biospecimens. The FP6 project entitled ‘Promoting Harmonisation of Epidemiological Biobanks in Europe’ (PHOEBE) (http://www.phoebe-eu.org) was designed to promote the harmonization of European population-based biobanks to optimise their ability of biobanks to communicate with one another, share ideas, information and data, and collaborate effectively in a complex world where laws and ethical guidelines often differ between nations and over time. To fulfil its mission PHOEBE worked closely with other international harmonization initiatives to help bring coherence to these issues and to forge a common way forward. This presentation will describe the challenges encountered and solutions proposed to help harness the full potential of biobanking in the generation and translation of research findings to improve health.
