MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Stefan Enroth, Associate Professor, PhD Dept. of Immunology, Genetics & Pathology Uppsala University MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: One basic requirement of life science research is the quality of samples. Proper handling and rigorous biobanking of clinical samples is very important when for instance collecting samples for rare diseases, for monitoring individual variation in longitudinal studies and when conducting prospective studies of biomarkers and risk of developing for instance cardiovascular disease. In epidemiological studies using case and control cohorts, great care is taken to ensure that the cases and controls are matched in terms of for instance age, anthropometrics and lifestyle exposures such as smoking or alcohol consumption. Technical factors and sampling handling history are not as commonly used. There has been a lack of studies that systematically investigated the effects of for instance storage-time on a larger set of plasma proteins. With emerging high-throughput technologies enabling measurements of a high number of proteins simultaneously on a population level, biomarker research will enter a new era and the more knowledge we have on what factors that influence circulating biomarker levels - such as plasma proteins, the higher the chances are of finding new clinically important biomarkers for disease. (more…)