National Medical Research Center for Preventive Medicine in Moscow is one of the founding members of the Russian National Association of Biobanks and Biobanking Specialists (NASBio). September 18, 2019, it held the 1st Scientific Meeting of the Association. In addition to NASBio members, many other researchers have participated, including over 30 specialists from Moscow, Saint-Petersburg, Tomsk, Rostov-on-Don, Obninsk, Novosibirsk and other cities, who connected remotely.

Presentations were given by Vice-President of NASBio, Director of Sechenov University (Moscow) V.E.Belyaev and Executive Director of NASBio A.I.Muraviev. In their lectures, the speakers described various issues of standardization in biobanking, application of Best Practices, Recommendations for Repositories, Fourth Edition (by International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories, ISBER) and internationally recognized standards by International Organization for Standardization, ISO. In particular, international standard ISO 20387 defines quality control requirements for the competence, impartiality and consistent operation of biobanks to ensure biological material and data collections of appropriate quality. In addition, economic efficiency issues of biospecimen storage formats was discussed.

We would like to remind our readers that NASBio aims include introduction of standards into national biobanking practices, harmonization of international and Russian requirements to biobanks, developing and validating methods for collecting, processing, storing and performing quality control of biospecimens.

At the moment, about 700 biobanks operate worldwide, storing over 300 mln biospecimens altogether. In particular, 18 such biorepositories already operate in Russia, being associated with a number of Federal research centers (National Medical Research Center for Preventive Medicine among them), medical schools, clinical centers and biotech companies.