Qatar Biobank Milestones in Building a Successful Biobank

Funding

A special meeting report is included from The International Biobanking Conference entitled ‘‘Quality Matters: A Global Discussion in Qatar,’’ which was held on March 25–27, 2019, in Doha, Qatar. The 3-day event was organized and hosted by QBB and the European, Middle Eastern, and African Society for Biopreservation and Biobanking (ESBB), with supporting collaboration from the International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories (ISBER) and the Biobanking and BioMolecular Resources Research Infrastructure-European Research Infrastructure Consortium (BBMRI-ERIC). The scientific agenda drew >1000 scientists, researchers, industry experts, and health professionals from five continents. Researchers, scientists, and experts from around the world were invited to present along with special presentations from QBB, showcasing their standing as a leading clinical biobank innovator in support of population and genomic medicine. Also, in this special section, QBB highlights some of the information technology featured at the biobank that allows for ongoing advances in research, national and international collaborations, as well as processes to maintain high quality standards and achievements. In this special section, QBB describes their path toward the implementation of best practices in their daily biobanking activities, as well as the next steps toward standardization in the biobank, including ongoing discussions in the area of best practices and standards. This is a milestone for QBB to achieve best practices in collecting, processing, storing, and finally sharing