Wednesday, 20 May 2026 | 14:00 - 15:30
3A: Preserving biodiversity: Challenges and opportunities in non-human biobanking
- Biobanking without borders: Connecting biodiversity, medicine and innovation
Non-human biobanks – encompassing amongst others animal, plant and microbial specimens – are essential for life science research and biodiversity conservation. They face challenges like ethical dilemmas, data standardisation and resource limitations not unlike human biobanks. Yet, they offer opportunities for basic research, ecological restoration, agricultural resilience and scientific innovation through advanced preservation, genomics and global collaboration. This session highlights their unique role in advancing integrated health for humans, animals and ecosystems.
Speakers included in this session:
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Highlight speaker: Jonas Astrin – GGBN, the Global Genome Biodiversity Network and its new secretariat at LIB Biobank
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Barbora Rolečková – From captive chickens to wild African mammals: Turning research collections into biobanks
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Bertrand Pain – OrganoZoo, CRB-Anim’s new platform dedicated to organoids for domestic animals
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Michele Grego – Marine cryopreservation across scales: from microbial communities to multicellular organisms
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Rosario Musumeci – MIRRI.IT – A national gateway to microbial biodiversity, scientific excellence and sustainable innovation
This session will be chaired by Dr. Jonas Astrin and Steven Smit, MSc.
6 speakers
Head of the Biobank Lab, BBMRI NN lead
Estonian Biobank
Biobank Curator
Leibniz Inst. For The Analysis Of Biodiversity Change
Research Director, PI
SBRI U1208 INSERM, USC1361 INRAE
Station Biologique de Roscoff
Associate Professor of Microbiology and Clinical Microbiology
University of Milano Bicocca
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Czech Academy Of Sciences