Mission: Serve as an educational and tutorial vehicle for disseminating information, best practices, regulations, and ethical/legal information formulated and issued by various NIH offices, federal agencies and other leading biospecimens organizations.

Vision:

1.      To create a place where all stakeholders may exchange scientific data, ideas, and information concerning the creation and use of high quality biospecimens for research, assay validation, technology development and other appropriate uses.

2.      To promote and facilitate interaction between NIH intramural and extramural stakeholders who are interested in and involved with a variety of clinically-oriented, translational research projects using high quality biospecimens.

3.      To encourage leading stakeholders to address critical elements in study design and statistical analysis of data to facilitate the production of accurate, optimal, and clinically meaningful results (best outcome).

4.      To educate stakeholders about the potential barriers and obstacles that may obstruct the sharing and collaboration between stakeholders across different organizations and countries.  

5.      To increase the awareness for the necessity of high quality biospecimens and the harmonization, and when appropriate, standardized procedures (best practices, SOPs) for annotating, collecting, transporting, processing, storing, and sharing biospecimens to ensure optimal reproducibility of outcomes and the privacy of the patients (donors) through adherence to the ethical and legal requirements associated with the use of biospecimens.

6.      To provide the connectivity to various biorepositories and biospecimens around the world, especially those containing rare and difficult to get biospecimens.