Affiliations 

  • 1 Department of Health, Research Institute for Tropical Medicine, Manila, Philippines
  • 2 Hospital Kuala Lumpur, Ministry of Health, W.P. Kuala Lumpur, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • 3 Faculty of Law, Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • 4 School of Public Health, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China
  • 5 University of the Philippines Los Banos, Laguna, Philippines
  • 6 The Verification Research, Training and Information Centre, London, United Kingdom
  • 7 Department of Laboratory Services, Ministry of Health, Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam
  • 8 Independent Consultant, San Francisco, California, USA
  • 9 Primate Research Center, IPB University, Bogor, Indonesia
  • 10 International Agency for Research on Cancer, World Health Organization, Lyon, France
  • 11 National Public Health Laboratory, Ministry of Health, Singapore, Singapore
  • 12 Institute of Explore and Experiment on Substance of Chemical Weapon of National Authority Chemical Weapons Convention (NACW), Phnom Penh, Cambodia
  • 13 Field Epidemiology Training Program Alumni Foundation, Quezon City, Philippines
  • 14 Biotechnology Research Department, Ministry of Education, Kyaukse, Myanmar
  • 15 Institute for Medical Research, Ministry of Health, Selangor, Malaysia
  • 16 University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines
  • 17 Department of Science, Ministry of Science and Technology, Vientiane, Lao PDR
  • 18 Laboratory Biorisk Consultancy & Training Pte. Ltd., Singapore, Singapore
  • 19 Ministry of Public Health, Bangkok, Thailand
  • 20 Department of Medical Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • 21 National Training Center for Biosafety and Biosecurity, National Institutes of Health, University of the Philippines Manila, Manila, Philippines
  • 22 University of the Philippines Manila, Quezon City, Philippines
  • 23 Clarity Labsolutions, Boca Raton, Florida, USA
  • 24 Medical School, Duke-National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
  • 25 National University Hospital Singapore, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
Biopreserv Biobank, 2024 Sep 09.
PMID: 39248001 DOI: 10.1089/bio.2024.0044

Abstract

Southeast Asian countries are at the forefront of public health pressures due to a confluence of factors such as population growth, urbanization, environmental pollution, and infectious diseases (re)emergence. Therefore, the ability to be able to conduct research addressing local and regional needs is of paramount importance. As such, biobanking activities, the standardized collection of biological samples, and associated data, developed over the past few decades supporting ongoing biomedical and clinical research, as well as surveillance are of critical importance. However, the regulatory landscape of biobanking is not widely understood and reported, which this narrative review aims to address for the ASEAN member states. It is evident that there are specific regulatory arrangements within each ASEAN member state, which though may be sufficient for the current level of operations, are unlikely to support a regional sharing of biological samples, data, and eventually benefits from the conducted research. Additionally, legacy and often-overlapping regulatory frameworks exist, which raise the need of an eventual consolidation under a single framework. Thus, this field requires further study as well as the creation of viable, practical proposals that would allow for biobanking harmonization and thus the exchange of biological samples and data to be achieved regionally, if not further afield.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.