Abstract

Research access to a large number of high-quality biospecimen, adequately annotated and ethically acquired, is critical to an improved understanding of disease and ultimately new development of effective diagnostic markers and therapeutic targets. Therefore, the importance of biobanking is widely recognized within the life science and healthcare communities. Resolution of the ethical issues, including informed consent, confidentiality and institutional review board approval, are probably the most important task to every biobank or biorepository. In Korea, the new, very strict ethical act on research, issued in 2005, requires researchers as well as biorepositories to know how they use or run a biorepository ethically without damaging the right of human subjects who gave the repository their biospecimen.

• Keywords: Biospecimen;Biobank;Biorepository;Ethics