Collecting New or Using Existing Samples

Uppsala Biobank is happy to assist in discussing various collection options when planning a study that involves biobank samples. Please feel free to contact us at an early stage, preferably before the ethical application is complete.

Samples can be collected independently (new collection), with the help of Uppsala Biobank's healthcare-integrated biobank service (new collection), or by extracting from an existing sample collection. Existing sample collections are either healthcare sample collections (primarily intended for patient care, diagnostics, and treatment) or research sample collections. More information is available under Collection and Sample Storage.

The most common source is extraction from the pathologist's healthcare sample collection. Regarding the collection/extraction of tissue or cytology samples, these samples almost always go through the clinical pathology department and are then considered existing samples (even if newly collected) because they are recorded in the pathologist's healthcare sample collection. However, there are cases where the collection of tissue samples for research occurs without the involvement of the pathologist, and in such instances, the samples are considered newly collected.