German Biobank Alliance

The Hannover Unified Biobank (HUB) is the central biobank of the Hannover Medical School (MHH). In addition to several collections of external cooperation partners, HUB manages and stores a large part of the collections of the MHH institutes and clinics. Overall, HUB currently stores around 1.5 million biosamples (body fluids, tissue, cells, microorganisms) from clinical routine procedures, research and clinical studies.

HUB works to the highest quality standards and has been accredited according to DIN EN ISO 20387:2020 in 2024. Standardised procedures and a high degree of automation in the field of sample processing (EasyBlood / ChemagicSTAR, Hamilton) enable a high sample quality. The samples are stored according to the highest safety standards in liquid nitrogen tanks, -80 °C freezers and a fully automated -80 °C storage system (BIOS M, Hamilton). All quality data relevant to biospecimens as well as a minimal data set are stored centrally using a biobank information management system (CentraXX, Kairos). The samples are linked to clinical data via MHH’s data warehouse (DWH). HUB has a data protection concept as well as an ethics vote and is already working with a “Broad Consent” patient consent.

HUB is part of the German Biobank Alliance’s IT Core Team.

Profile

Clinical Biobank, Tissue Biobank, Liquid Biobank

Accreditation and/or certification

accredited, DIN EN ISO 20387:2020

Key figures

Funding bodies and partners

Combatting Bacterial Resistance in Europe (COMBACTE)
Norddeutsche Biobank Allianz (NBA)