Establishment of a system public research infrastructure for biobanking at Jessenio Medical Faculty in Martin Comenius University in Bratislava

The biobanks for human samples are playing an increasing role in preventive healthcare. They are a key tool for increasing the efficiency of global medical research, said Professor Andrea Čalkovská, Dean of Jessenio Medical Faculty in Martin.


In Slovakia, a major project of establishing and operating a system of biobanks is launched, which teams of experts at the Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic, the Comenius University and the Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAV) have worked intensively with other Slovak pioneers for several years. An amazing thing finally succeeded, and thanks to a project funded by the EU's European Structural and Investment Funds of around 18M Euro, a national biobank is starting to build up as a system storage of biological samples (tissues, cells, blood and other body fluids) from patients and healthy people. Human biological samples are the most valuable source of knowledge in medical research and are only available in limited quantities. The newly built biobank in Martin will store previously diagnosed samples of patients from all over Slovakia in state-of-the-art automatic systems applying all legal and ethical standards. An integral part is also the complementary project of the digital biobank, also funded by the Operational Programme Integrated Infrastructure (OPII) 2014-2020, amounting to almost 11.6M Euro, ensuring the bioinformatic part as well as the archiving of digital records and the use of artificial intelligence algorithms, which will enable links and links between analysis results and clinical data. The experts from the University of Žilina will provide their know-how in the field of information technologies for the generation and analysis of data packages, including -omics-solutions. The joint and synergistic use of these resources will enable many research activities, including the possibility of verifying the results of basic research, e.g. new biomarkers on clinical samples, the development of new models to explore cancer mechanisms and rare diseases, while significantly improving the conditions for participation of Slovak science in major international projects. Ultimately, the establishment of the biobank infrastructure leads to an increase in knowledge and development of health, diseases. Their implementation will help maintain health or successfully treat many serious diseases.


Infrastructure that has long been missing in Slovakia as one of the few EU countries will help scientists to find and prevent diseases more effectively. Slovakia is also able to participate in the European or global network of national biobanks, thus increasing the success rate of R & D in new preventive measures, diagnostics and treatments. Biobank as a source of data, expertise and clinical contexts can also strengthen and develop innovative activities of researchers and new firms in Slovakia and in the context of international cooperation. As a basic prerequisite for the development of excellent biomedical research, the biobank has great potential to lead to the development of unique new procedures or medicines that will make Slovakia visible on an innovative health map.


The project program of the biobank infrastructure consists of a complex consortium led by Jessenio Medical Faculty in Martin Comenius University in Bratislava, together with the Biomedical Centre of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava, the Centre of Social and Psychological Sciences of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava, the Faculty of Medicine of the Comenius University in Bratislava, the Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic, the National Cancer Institute in Bratislava, the National Institute of Rheumatic Diseases in Piešťany and the University of Žilina.