Wizards of Biobanking: The University of Newcastle Biobank

Full Episode Transcript:

Srikanth:

Welcome to the third edition of ‘Wizards of Biobanking’. Today, I have Cassandra Griffin with me, who heads the biobank at the University of Newcastle/Hunter Cancer Biobank. I let her clarify since they seem to have many different names. So, Cassandra welcome, and let us quickly start with your introduction – what do you do, what you have been doing before etc.

Cassandra: 

Thank you so much for having me. It was really a privilege to be invited. So, I am a biobanking and clinic research manager at the University of Newcastle. The biobanking platform that I manage used to be Hunter Cancer Biobank which was its origin. It started out as a collection of formalin-fixed tissues that was set up in conjunction with New South Wales Health Pathology.  And then it started to grow with support from the Cancer Institute New South Wales. We included a sequential blood collection of samples again all through cancer, and then we started to expand even more. We started to collaborate with some external groups such as the ALG or breast cancer trials, sarcoma, diabetes studies, and fertility studies. We decided at that point we couldn’t really call ourselves a cancer bank anymore, and also we were providing other services in terms of sample processing – some staining and other laboratory work. So at that point, to recognize the growth and to recognize the fact that we were working all throughout regional New South Wales, that was when we rebranded to New South Wales Regional biospecimen services. So, that’s kind of our base then we’ve got Hunter Cancer Biobank, the Mark Hughes Foundation Brain Cancer Bank, and also our cooperative group partners in there.

Srikanth:

That is interesting because when we started, the product was named CaTissue which landed for cancer tissue until we started doing a lot of other things. So, we had to become OpenSpecimen to indicate that we actually had not just cancer or for that matter, tissue. So, that sounds interesting. You talked about breast cancer, brain cancer, and the third group. So, the third group or other groups, do they do non-cancer studies? Any other disease that you guys work on? 

Cassandra: 

Yeah, so it’s not just breast and brain there’s also a lot of hematological work and sarcoma. But outside of cancer, diabetes, and preterm birth. There’s nothing at the top of my head now, what else do we have? 

Srikanth:

Do you do anything with COVID? 

Cassandra: 

Not specifically. A lot of that was put through the statewide bank and through some of the government infrastructure. So, no! We did have samples that were collected during the time. There was some COVID work in conjunction with a multiple sclerosis bank that we helped curate. So, I mean realistically, we’re the custodians, and we help people manage their sample collections. But yeah, they’re the ones driving the research agendas.

Srikanth:

Sounds good. So let’s talk about you. Can you give us some idea about you, what did you initially do? What is your educational background? and how did you get into biobanking? 

Cassandra: 

Okay, it’s a little bit different. I think most people’s career path is sort of fairly linear. Mine looks a little bit like an Asian painting with stairs going everywhere. I actually started out in the performing arts. So, I trained to perform in musical theater and I did a little bit of work on stage and backstage in musical theater. 

Srikanth:

Wow

Cassandra: 

Yeah, it’s not the answer you’re expecting, I’m guessing. 

So, that’s where I started. I did an arts degree in performing arts anthropology and ancient history. I’ve always had a passion for ancient history. And then in my third year, I was doing a subject on health and disease in the ancient world. Graduating my arts degree not entirely sure what a stable career might have looked like, coming out of that and being really interested in this health and disease subject, I took a sharp turn. As soon as I graduated, I enrolled in biomedical science again at the University of Newcastle. So, I completed a Biomed degree there and then went on and studied for a master of Public Health at the University of Sydney, mostly focusing on Infectious Disease Control and epidemiology. Then I worked in that space for a little while before going into cancer clinical trials, running away to London for a couple of years and working in medical Communications, and then I came back and found the wonderful world of biobanking. But it’s interesting even though I hadn’t necessarily been introduced to the world of biobanking until I took on this role, with what I know now and reflecting on my career path until that point, I was actually engaged in biobanking at numerous points. So, you know we roll our eyes now when sometimes we get samples in from clinical trial sites that might not be labeled in the best way or something that’s just a little bit tricky to handle. And then I have to stop myself and go, oh that was you five years ago that perhaps didn’t quite send through the best sample to the central lab. Again, working in microbiology and in a PC3 environment, we’re quite regularly banking the specimens that we produced. But at the time, to my knowledge, we weren’t coining it via banking. So, it’s interesting to see how it has always been there in the background of the work I’ve been doing. 

Srikanth:

Sure, do you play any musical instruments?

Cassandra: 

I’m a vocalist, so I fronted a band when I was younger. And I still do some musical theater now. 

Srikanth:

Nice. So, we should have a performance in the next ABNA meeting. 

Cassandra: 

We’ve talked about an ABNA band and stranger things have happened. Our 20th anniversary conference is on record, so it does have a bit of a musical theme.

Srikanth:

Oh, nice! 

Cassandra: 

You should come along and anything could happen.

Srikanth:

Given the trajectory you had, obviously you have a history of being a self-learner because you have to do so many different things. So, how do you keep yourself updated about the latest things happening? Do you read specific journals, blogs, or books? What is your go-to for learning new things?

Cassandra: 

Oh, that’s a really good question. I think if you’re learning new things and if you’re engaged in your field, it’s because you’re passionate about what you’re doing, and one of the reasons why I love this field and I love my job is that it comes down to the people and the connections. So, I think the way that I learn is I’m very engaged with my peers both through ABNA and in my own Institute.

And in those conversations where we’re talking about the thing that we love, we’re talking about our work, people will reference certain articles or podcasts or even their own research and in having those discussions then prompts you to go and look at more things and read up on things.

So, I wouldn’t say I necessarily have one source of information, but that you know, my antenna is sort of always out and always on, and I wait until something packs my interest. I read all the usual journals that most biobankers would keep their finger on the pulse off, but I’m very open to hearing what’s going on around me and I think as biobankers it’s really important that we are collaborative and engaged with the researchers who are around us because our resource is what supports their work. And the more engaged and collaborative we can be with them, the better the partnership and the better the research that results. It’s a long-winded answer to your question.

Srikanth: 

Learning happens by osmosis. You have to be curious and keep looking for things. It’s not direct teaching anymore once you’re out of college. So, you have to seek what you’re interested in, and that is what is interesting.  

Cassandra: 

Absolutely and isn’t that why we all went into science? We are biospecimen scientists it’s not

just biobankers, because we’re always asking questions.

Srikanth: 

Right! So, moving on to the biobank, you briefly talked about what the biobank does. Every biobank is different in the way it operates. Some just store specimens, some are interacting with patients, and some are somewhere in the middle. So in the work that you guys do, do you get involved in the collection process? or is that all done by the researchers? and once the researchers collect the specimen it comes to you guys.

Cassandra: 

It depends on the study. So for a lot of our external studies, they’re collected on-site by trial coordinators and that’s managed centrally. So, we just receive the samples to process, or sometimes they’re already processed, and we just bank the final sample. Particularly for the Mark Hughes Foundation Brain Cancer Bank, we are hands-on and face-to-face with the patients, and we can do home visits to have consent conversations in a place where the families are comfortable. We go on to the wards. That’s a very patient-facing kind of element. So we cover the full spectrum. 

Srikanth: 

Nice. So, when you’re doing that, how do you work on getting more people enrolled or more people involved with the biobank from the patient or participant’s point of view? Or is it pre-decided as to who gets involved, and you are not really in charge of enrolling? 

Cassandra: 

So, we’re not in charge of the external collections. That’s all sort of done through the organization’s publicity. But for our internal collections like the Mark Hughes biobank, a lot of it’s done through community awareness, and they have patient forums. We’re very fortunate that we have these amazing brain care coordinators who are on the ward and the first point of call for patients. So, they will introduce biobanking very early on when they’re first introducing themselves to patients, and then sort of tap me in at a time that seems appropriate. So, we’re lucky, given that it’s a regional area. I think people communicate differently, and we interact slightly differently, so it’s very personable. We do some online promotions for the Mark Hughes Foundation, and they have been fabulous with that. We recorded a piece for a current affair that went nationally, but most of the time it’s just on the wards talking to people and spreading the news that way.

Srikanth: 

Ok, so how many people work in the biobank? What is your total strength? 

Cassandra: 

Our team is about 8. So, we’re a fairly big team.

Srikanth: 

Right, and so how do you manage training and keep the team updated on new things? Is there regular training etc. that happens?

Cassandra: 

I wouldn’t say regular training happens. We obviously keep our finger on the pulse to any opportunity. So if the university does raise training opportunities or there’s an opportunity for the team to attend ABNA or ISBER or any of those conferences, but always very keen to have representation. We’re also really keen for the team to stay closely engaged with the partners that we work with, and I think they learn a lot from that consistent interaction. I mean we do have quality management processes in place for safety training and those kinds of standard operating protocols all the usual stuff is in place. But, for skill development, we would look for conferences and that type of thing.

Srikanth:

So, these people are the ones who work in the biobank, not the ones who are going to the patient to collect specimens, right? so, that’s more of the clinic coordinators. 

Cassandra: 

We can actually do both. So, I regularly spend a lot of my time with patients and I probably spend more time than most of our group face-to-face with patients, but we’ve all done it with quite sub-specialized in our team, so we have a blood processing team, we also have a team working on histology related research, immunohistochemistry, developing tissue microarrays, etc. So, it really depends. Everyone kind of has their niche. But I’m always really encouraging and really keen for the team to step in somebody else’s shoes, learn what they’re doing for a day and cross skills, and learn from each other wherever we can. 

Srikanth: 

So, you talked about the part where you personally, or others interact with the patient directly. So, that must be probably the most meaningful or the most interesting part of the job, right? where you’re actually meeting people who either you’re directly impacting or indirectly contributing to the purpose. Can you talk about that? You know, for us, talking directly to customers where we get to learn so many more things than when we’re not doing that. So, ultimately, these are your so-called customers.

Cassandra: 

Yeah, I feel really privileged that we’re able to see that full life cycle from meeting a patient, collecting a sample, and then seeing it all the way through to going out the door producing data, and then seeing the publication. So, I feel really privileged that as a bank, we can work right across that spectrum, and engaging with the community is by far my favorite part of this job. I mean we don’t biobank for the sake of papers, we do biobank for improving outcomes for people. We do biobanking to help people. That’s the goal. So, I think knowing that there’s somebody at the other end of this and knowing that someone has trusted you with their sample, makes it a lot more real. I think it makes what we do feel a lot more special for want of a less tacky word. I think I may have mentioned to you previously we have a postmortem bank. So, people with advanced brain cancer can consent to donate their brain upon their passing. That’s a really emotional situation for families and the consent conversations are extremely emotional. That’s why we often do those in the person’s home where they’re most comfortable and surrounded by their support network. But it’s amazing the weight and the value that those specimens have afterward because we can attach a story to them. Yes, they’re de-identified, and we are adherent to everything in terms of ethics and making sure that everything is completely secure and not re-identifiable, but just knowing the types of people that have made those contributions, just makes us as custodians feel like. We really have something not just value financially or to research but of value, to someone else, that’s their legacy. 

Srikanth: 

Correct! And this is the true bench to bedside.

Cassandra: 

Absolutely! We are the cornerstone of translational research. That’s what biobanks are, right?

Srikanth: 

Right. Yeah, that’s truly amazing, so do you also work with pharma or external researchers, or commercial research groups to provide specimens?

Cassandra: 

Yeah, we do. So, we’re working with a couple of startup companies, but not with big pharma companies yet. We’re working with startups just to help them work through optimizing protocols and doing some drug screening and that type of thing. and that’s really great as well because they come from different ways of thinking, and they have different expectations. So, it’s a great learning curve for us. So, working with those partners who have slightly different resources at their disposal makes us a lot more financially sustainable because we aren’t institutionally funded. We need to make sure that we split our time, and our labor across industry or external bodies and also the researchers that are grant funded within our own institution. 

Srikanth: 

Makes sense. I know you’re doing an amazing job because coincidentally, we are working with CSIRO who selected you as the biobank. So, obviously, you are doing a lot of right things for someone like CSIRO to select you through a tender process. So, how do you publicize the biobank and maintain the internal processes?

Cassandra: 

So, publicity largely happens through our website. We do seem to get quite good traffic on our website, but the challenge with that is making sure it’s always up-to-date. You can’t just set up a website and hope it maintains itself, but that’s where a lot of our contacts come from. The second place and probably the most prominent place that our new contracts come from is the word of mouth from our existing clients. So if you do your job, and you do it well, and you keep your partners happy, they tell their friends. We are very grateful to some of our first partners who came on board and have done that for us. 

CSIRO was slightly different. It was a tender process right, and I think it’s been something that’s been really important to us. Something that I think a lot of biobanks are starting to think about that if we’re going to engage with business or with industry, we do need to start thinking about what we do and implementing business processes and that means being familiar with competitive tenders, knowing how to prepare a request for pitch document, engaging a little bit more with marketing strategy and long-term strategic design around what the offerings of a biobank are, how we differ between biobanks. The CSIRO has pointed out to us that as a biobank, we’ve always traditionally worked with researchers and a lot of us trained as researchers, so we understand how researchers work. But if biobanks are going to interact with industry and with businesses, then biobanks also need to understand how industry and business work and need to start operating as a business. So, I think it’s partly about understanding the people that we’re working with and then looking at how we can learn and grow ourselves to make it a more productive two-way relationship. I’m very lucky that my time in London was in a Medical Education Agency where we pitched, and constantly went in on tenders so that was a great way to learn in a pretty thriving happening city how to deal with those kinds of challenges.

Srikanth: 

That sounds very interesting. First, from music to research to now biobanking, that’s a pretty good transition. There is a lot of similarity in terms of how we do stuff. Today we work with about 85–90 biobanks or academic research centers across 20 countries. Pretty much everything is because of word-of-mouth references. Especially in the research community or the academic world a lot of collaboration between centers, which kind of helps us. People interact and the world keeps growing. 

Let’s move on. Since you do a lot of patient enrollment, how do you manage consent? Is it the broad consent for research or do you have specific individual consent tiers or statements that people can choose? and then how is it recorded, is it done electronically or on paper?  

Cassandra: 

So, it’s broad consent for unspecified research. That’s the model that we’ve been working with since we started. It is still a paper-based consent model. We are hoping to move to e-consent soon. Just because they’re working across multiple sites, and you know IT infrastructure and things that aren’t always great in some of the regional hospitals, we’ve stuck with paper-based consents and that’s usually done by the clinicians when they first engage with the patient, and then we get notified once consent’s been obtained. 

Srikanth: 

Do you upload the data to your EMR or record it somewhere else? 

Cassandra: 

So for certain streams where we’ve got surgical coordinators who are able to put the consent in the EMR it naturally goes into their file through the hospital. But that’s probably the minority. Most of the time when we’re facilitating consents, we have a paper-based filing system to keep the originals and then everything else is uploaded into our database. The hard and electronic copy just for backup.

Srikanth: 

Okay, I think I know a thing or two about your database, so we’ll come to that after some time. So, now moving on to managing biospecimens and two things are super important. So, one is how do you manage quality? How do you make sure the biospecimen is in security and safety? And second, is the quality of biospecimen data.  You know, having a biospecimen without good-quality data associated with it, even if it might be a high-quality biospecimen, makes it pretty much useless. So, let’s talk about how do you manage the quality of the biospecimen first in terms of its processing and storage backups.

Cassandra:

So, I mean quality starts at collection, so if we’re not the ones collecting the sample, if it’s being collected at a site, we try to be involved right from the development of the laboratory manual. We try to also get involved during site initiation visits so that we can come in right at the start and help support those teams to collect and process the best possible sample they can. If we’re doing the processing, so everything that we do when we set up a new study or a new collection we have a full suite of standard operating protocols that are developed for that sample. We have a training system throughout our team to make sure everyone’s compliant with that and that regularly gets checked just through the levels of seniority within our processing team. We are New South Wales Statewide Biobank certified. So, all our SOPs for our basic practices have been submitted and approved. We haven’t yet gained accreditation, but we’re ISO-compliant, and we’re always mindful of the recommendations for quality and processing from that avenue. I guess consistency, and keeping records is key, and we note down absolutely everything. So, we track our samples from the moment they walk in the door until the moment that they’re frozen. And obviously, we use the OpenSpecimen database to make sure that everything is where we say it is when we say it’s there. So ensuring that we have a full record of everything that’s happened at any time with notes of any deviations or anything that might have interrupted a protocol is really important to us. Regarding physical security, our laboratory is all swipe card accessible and all of our databases and infrastructure systems are all password accessible. They’re also in a locked building. After hours, you need special permission to be able to get into there. The records are all stored in the physical lock and key. Data becomes slightly trickier. So, we do have minimum data sets that we store with each sample, but we also do a little bit of bespoke data mining when the researcher has appropriate ethics in place. That’s extremely arduous and not something that we have sorted out completely. I think it’s something that we’re hoping we can move to a better system in the future. We’re talking to various parties about how we do that, but you’re right, the data can make or break a specimen. Having all of that additional context to explain any deviation or anything that you might find in your sample is what gives meaning to the data that you’re producing. So, it’s a work in progress, but we do have a minimum data set that’s stored along with every sample.  

Srikanth: 

Right! And the bespoke data that you mentioned is that the analysis part of the data or the data that you collect from the participant of the specimens?

Cassandra: 

It’s more like collecting. So, for example, somebody might be after a steroid. They might know that the market they’re looking at is particularly steroid sensitive. Now that may not be something that we would necessarily record in our minimum data set. So, provided there’s the appropriate ethics in place from the researcher, we’d then go back to the source files and we would manually comb through and look for someone’s history of steroid use and how that might be reflected in the time points that we’ve given them from our collection. 

Srikanth: 

Sure! And what about say the inventory or the freezer management? How many freezers do you have right now? Are they all on-site? Do you have an off-site storage location?

Cassandra: 

Well, I couldn’t give you an exact number. I think there are 8 or 10 at the moment. They are currently on one site, but that’s likely to change in the next couple of weeks. We’re getting another couple set up on Callaghan due to storage capacity. We also have the liquid nitrogen dewars that are on-site as well and everything is cataloged through OpenSpecimen. 

Srikanth: 

Right and when you’re storing specimens do you also do things like rare specimens have a backup in a different freezer? How do you manage some of those things? 

Cassandra: 

So, this is something that used to be really popular, that you split a collection across multiple freezers. We’re actually speaking about this in an ABNA context the other day because it’s not really standard practice anymore from my understanding for a lot of banks to do that. I think if your safety protocols are appropriate, and if you have the appropriate checks and balances, alarms, monitors, and industry-approved freezers, then touch wood realistically I mean if you’re losing half of your collection you’ve lost your power calculation anyway. So having half of them often undermines the value. We always have backup freezers. So if anything were to fail, we could do a very quick transfer across to a newer freezer. But generally speaking and from speaking with a lot of my colleagues, the idea of splitting them across two freezers isn’t something that we do. We have one study that requests it, but it’s generally not the primary practice. 

Srikanth: 

Yeah, all specimens are rare. So, you might as well take care of all the specifics. 

So now about the data part, I think I have already touched up on things like having a minimal data set using OpenSpecimen. How do you use this data to publicize or share the data with your researchers so that your specimen utilization rate improves or researchers get access to what you do?

Cassandra: 

Yeah, so it depends on what they’re after. We can export a lot of our clinical data stored in REDCap, so the sample data is obviously stored in OpenSpecimen, and we can export that if that’s what researchers are after. If they’re after more than just very basic demographics, then we would do a larger export from REDCap, or we’d create a data set through data mining, and it’s usually just passed over in spreadsheet form unless they’re after imaging data which is becoming more and more common. Imaging data is usually transferred using PubMed using external hard drives and things like pending data security and different regulations around external devices.  

Srikanth: 

Sure any plans to do online cataloging? 

Cassandra: 

We would love to. We are currently doing an overhaul in an audit of our collection which is at about 55000 samples, so once we get that sorted, we will be able to re-upload everything and then the goal would be an online catalog absolutely. 

Srikanth: 

Right! So, now coming to the end of the specimen’s lifecycle. We talked a lot about collection, processing, etc. So, how do you engage with your researchers who need this specimen? How do they come to know about your biobank? How do they approach you? How do you manage that process? 

Cassandra: 

Well, probably a little bit different. I was trained at the University where I now work, so a lot of the researchers I work with taught me back in the day, and I’m still located in the same building as them. So, a lot of it is a hallway conversation if I’m honest. But in terms of formal processes, we do publicize through University newsletters, and we have our website. So people who are looking for samples are directed to us. People will generally approach us just with a very broad inquiry to find out what’s available in the first instance. Based on that, we can then provide a quote for cost recovery. Once that’s been accepted by the researcher, we then move through the governance process which involves the submission of a sample request form. The form gets reviewed by our scientific advisory committee for the bank. Once approved, we can then start to distribute samples to the researcher. If they’re an external researcher, we also have the MTA process and service agreements.  

Srikanth: 

Interesting! So, now that you talked about cost recovery, how do you sustain the biobank as a whole? Obviously, we touched upon a lot in terms of external projects, but from a cost recovery point of view, one of the challenges that most biobanks face is sustenance and cost recovery. That is kind of a hot topic in pretty much every conference. So, what do you have to say about that? and what are the things that you guys do right or might want to change?

Cassandra: 

It’s hard. I mean when I took on this job I was told that in the next five years, you need to ensure that the bank is 100% recovered. Now I’m not entirely sure if that is actually possible. I could be wrong, but I don’t think anybody has managed to do that a hundred percent. But what we did was we stripped everything right back, and we looked at everything that we do for our partners, and we broke it down by minute (how many minutes does it take for a particular task). We did this for all the tasks and we developed quite an extensive pricing module based on labor and consumables, and we’ve had to stick to it. I mean there’s always scope slides and there’s always hallway conversations. You can’t take the collaboration and the good faith out of the research. I think when you start charging for collaboration you take the magic out. So, there’s a fine line between being able to cost recover everything and being able to keep those relationships in a positive sense. But I do think we’ve handled it fairly well. We tend to sit at around about 80% cost recovery for our overall operations and that’s inclusive of all staff labor and consumables. 

Srikanth: 

Does that sound much higher than what a usual industry average would be? Do you have any idea of how much is the cost recovery of other biobanks? 

Cassandra: 

From what I understand, and I could be speaking completely out of turn, I think that’s fairly high compared to other biobanks. I think that’s because a lot of biobanks have either institutional support or are highly reliant on grants. We can’t have external partners if we can’t offer them security, if they don’t think we’re going to be here in the next five years, right? So, it’s a bit of a dance and a bit of a balance. I think you know this more than me. I think the general idea is that a business should be able to run on around about 10% of administrative or infrastructure costs. So with that in mind, I would love to think that we could cost recover another 10% and keep ourselves at 90. I feel like that’s the best-case scenario. But we’re working with our institution, who are really supportive, and we’re looking to figure out where we can provide the most value and ensure that we keep up our commitments.

Srikanth: 

Moving on we will talk about the database part. I’ll divide that question into two before we get to OpenSpecimen specifically. You’ve been using OpenSpecimen I think for the past five or six years. 

Cassandra: 

It’s longer than that. I think it’s more like eight years. 

Srikanth: 

Right, therefore if a biobank that is using Excel sheets or something else in-house database, etc., and is now looking out for a new database or setting up a more streamlined process, other than telling them to use OpenSpecimen what would be your suggestion about how should they go about the process? 

Cassandra: 

I think with these kinds of databases you need to keep in mind that the field we’re working in is extremely dynamic, constantly evolving, and forever changing, which means we as biobankers need to be able to pivot on a dime and restructure the way we do things and if that’s going to be possible, the LIMS system that you’re working with has to be customizable. I think that’s one of the greatest strengths of OpenSpecimen. It can make the user experience a little bit intimidating sometimes because it is so powerful and so customizable, but I think once you get past that and see it as a strength, to me, that’s been one of the greatest strengths. One of my recommendations to anyone looking for a new LIMS would be to find something that is customizable. I would also say the second most important thing, perhaps even the first most important thing, is to find a biobanking platform or a LIMS where you have sufficient support and where the provider of that LIMS sees themselves as a partner and someone working with you who is invested in the industry so that you can work together to provide the best possible solution for the industry. So if it’s just a quick off-the-shelf, and you never hear from them again, I would suggest that’s not going to be a great relationship moving forward because the industry moves too quickly. 

Srikanth: 

Right. You know what has helped us is closely and continuously working with the people like you. And also, as we add more customers, each of them has their own additional requirements. They like it 95%, but want this 5% percent more. So as we do that, the overall solution becomes more powerful for everyone. So that kind of adds up. 

For example, CSIRO, we are just starting to work with them this week, has a very interesting requirement of wanting to send a welcome email to the patient with the consent as a PDF, so that they can download, and review it offline, before they come to the clinic. Or send a follow-up email to a certain subset of patients. So, something like that might be useful to another 5–10 people who are already using OpenSpecimen, but they might be doing all these things manually. Someone downloading the names, attaching email addresses, sending out emails, this whole process can be automated now. 

Cassandra: 

I think that’s something that I considered as being part of OpenSpecimen. We hear a lot, particularly from the families of people who have donated samples postmortem that – they want follow-up. Obviously, we can’t tell them this specific sample was used in this specific project, that would be unethical. But, just to let them know the sample has been used, so you know if there was an ability to you know when you distribute a sample to let the family or the donor know FYI your samples are now being used, I think that would be a really useful functionality.  

Srikanth: 

Yeah, that would be amazing to get an email to know that you have contributed. 

So, yeah, we are coming towards the end of the podcast. Let’s talk about OpenSpecimen. So, you already mentioned that we have been working together for about seven-eight years, time flies. You also talked about the customizable and configurable part of OpenSpecimen. So, other than the eight people who work in the lab, do any of the external people also have access to OpenSpecimen for anything? 

Cassandra: 

Absolutely. So, our external partners, the collaborative groups that we work with, can all view things, and they can run their own queries. Jenna Bowen, who I work with, does most of this side of what we do, so she can speak to it in a lot more detail. But Jenna sets people up in a way that they can then query their own samples and be able to run a lot of those reports without having to get things from her, although that report functionality is what she uses when she provides her quarterly or monthly report to our clients, they do have limitations.

Srikanth: 

Nice. So, do you know how many such people are there who are not part of the lab but have access, like a rough number of you know just a random number?

Cassandra: 

There would be four or five collaborative groups and I would say there’s probably four or half a dozen maybe in each of those groups who would have access to OpenSpecimen. 

Srikanth: 

So, how do you manage training? When you onboard either a new employee uh or you know some of these research groups from external sites that join, how do you manage training them on using OpenSpecimen?  

Cassandra: 

So that definitely falls to Jenna and her wonderful skills. Jenna has some training protocols set up, and she’s also got some dummy protocols that she’s able to walk people through. I’ve sat in with her a few times when she’s on board with new clients and walked them through various queries. She shows them how to set it up. I believe she has directed them to some of the online resources that you’ve provided as well. So, we’ve certainly made use of those when it’s been relevant, but a lot of the time it’s just sitting with people and walking them through it and answering questions as they come up. I think with a system like OpenSpecimen you really need to get your hands dirty. You need to be in there, working with it. It’s not something you can just passively watch. So, we’re very keen to get people using it, and then we support it as queries come up.

Srikanth: 

Okay, when you give samples out to researchers, and they do their research, etc., do they return data to you guys? Do you store that in OpenSpecimen? 

Cassandra: 

There isn’t an official mechanism for that and that’s something that I think we’d really like to address in the near future. Purely by the nature of how we work and the fact that we’re in a smaller community compared to some regions, we were often acknowledged on papers. We keep in touch with the researchers, and for want of a better term, we have repeat vendors, so people do keep coming back, and we are aware of the data that’s been generated, and we can often if we know someone’s wants to do something similar we’ll make that connection and put people in touch. But in terms of a formal mechanism, for receiving data back and adding additional value to the specimen, we’re not there yet, but we would love to be. That’s definitely a future direction. 

Srikanth: 

So, moving on, let’s talk about ABNA a bit. ABNA stands for Australasian Biospecimen Network Association and you are the current president. So, let’s talk about how it contributes to biospecimen science in Australia, New Zealand etc., and why should someone join or attend ABNA conferences?

Cassandra: 

ABNA is a professional network. One of its main intentions is to disseminate learnings, facilitate networking and build a community, so that people aren’t reinventing the wheel. We are able to learn from each other, and we’re able to grow and progress the discipline of biospecimen science forward. I say biospecimen science not biobanking because I think over the last couple of years we’ve really actively worked to show that what we do is a discipline and a profession in itself. There are skills and there is a knowledge base that comes with being a biobanker or a biospecimen scientist. It’s really important that we recognize that unique skill set. I’m probably an example of someone who greatly benefited from ABNA. So, as I said, I came into this job not entirely sure what I was doing or how I got here. It was suggested to me by a colleague from another institution that I attend an ABNA meeting in Melbourne. It was going there and meeting a number of colleagues who then twisted my arm into joining the committee that absolutely changed the trajectory of my career as a biobanker. I have learned so much. I have had my eyes opened to so many different opportunities, ways of working, and ways of interacting. I think biobanking at times can be a lonely profession. We’re often small teams embedded within universities or other infrastructure, and we don’t have access to other people who are doing what we do. We often work in isolation. So, ABNA is wonderful at being able to create that peer network and allowing you to interact with people who are facing the same challenges that you have the same opportunities as you and can really get you thinking differently. 

I know you were at our conference in Perth last October. I, personally, feel like that was a great example of when we had seed bankers talking about challenges that resonated with veterinary bankers that were also relevant to somebody banking cancer. So, the more we can learn and the more we can network, the stronger we are as a community.

Srikanth: 

I think we have been coming to ABNA for quite a few years now. I don’t remember when we started, but obviously, COVID had its own impact, but otherwise, I think we have attended at least five or six ABNA conferences. So, the ABNA conference is in October this year? 

Cassandra: 

Yeah. So, this is definitely not one to miss. So, this year it’s on October 8th I believe, and we’re at SeaWorld on the Gold Coast. So, being our 20th conference, it really is going to be something special. The theme is on record. So, we’re looking at some of the past successes and some of the greatest hits and then where the industry could be going forward after this. But there are some real surprises in the program and some wonderful things that you can only do at SeaWorld. So, I really think this year will be special, and I’m hoping we have a really good turnout this year. 

Srikanth: 

That’s a musical, right?

Cassandra: 

Look, I’m not committing to anything. But, I’m not ruling it out. 

Srikanth: 

I think, not being a biospecimen scientist, not being someone who runs a biobank, being someone who comes from a computer science background, something like ABNA, where we go and not attend like every session, but many interesting things that we get to hear. 

In one of my favorite sessions from the last ABNA, I noticed the Koala. The session is on how someone is doing research on how to increase the population of Koalas. Those kinds of things are very interesting which probably would get only in a conference like ABNA.  

Cassandra: 

And that’s the goal. As you say, if that’s not necessarily your background, that’s the strength of ABNA, because science doesn’t happen in a bubble. We have to be multidisciplinary. We have to work with our peers and I think that’s what ABNA has always been very committed to is having that richness, giving everybody a voice, and showing the various roles that people have to play in the biobanking world, so that just shows me that we hit our mark.

Srikanth: 

Did I pronounce it right? Is it a Koala? 

Cassandra: 

Is it a Koala? He was tracking them with drones. Have you met one? 

Srikanth: 

Yeah, definitely I have probably seen them in some zoos. But, the one that I’m going to talk about is not about Koalas, but in Melbourne, in Murdoch Children’s Hospital, they have a section where one of these is something similar to koalas, yeah Meerkats are there. So, that’s interesting too. You can go there and sit, and you can see them running. 

Cassandra: 

We’ll have to arrange for you to have a Koala encounter and actually hold on the next time you’re down. 

Srikanth:  

Yeah, that would be interesting. 

Cassandra: 

Maybe a dolphin at SeaWorld.

Srikanth:  

Oh yeah, so that’s pretty much what we wanted to cover anything that you want to add before we wrap up the session? 

Cassandra: 

Thank you for having me. It’s been a really wonderful opportunity to chat with you.

Srikanth:  

Yeah, same here and this is something that we are doing in an effort to generally talk to people like you, get a better understanding, which helps others. It’s been personally a very educational and enriching experience. But I think in general, having a record of such a discussion is useful for say new biobankers, people who are setting up new biobanks just learning and also getting to know who they can talk to if they have you know similar things to discuss in great detail. So thanks a lot. 

Cassandra: 

Thank you and if you don’t mind, I should just add on that note of wanting to know whom to get in contact with and whom to network with – ABNA will be launching special interest groups towards the end of this year. That’s one of the goals of that is for people like-minded people confronting challenges or with similar interests, can come together and actually create those communities right to be able to phone a friend and do things like that. We’re launching that later this year, which will be exciting.