The Leipzig Medical Biobank (LMB) at the University Leipzig is a state-of-the-art biobank for the quality-assured collection, processing, storage and provision of biospecimens. Founded in 2010, it initially collected, processed, stored and made available for research projects mainly liquid samples such as urine, serum, plasma and saliva from epidemiological studies of the Leipzig Research Centre for Civilisation Diseases (LIFE).
In 2017 healthcare integrated biobanking was started with clinical partners and the Institutes of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in oncology. The samples are processed in a highly standardised and traceable manner and stored predominantly at temperatures of -80°C or <-150°C in the vapour phase of liquid nitrogen. Storage is carried out in strict compliance with an uninterrupted cold chain and constant monitoring. All samples are identified by a barcode and can thus be linked to quality-relevant data such as processing and storage times as well as to clinical data of the donor. In 2021 also the collection of liquid, tissue and plaque samples from patients with cardiovascular disease started
More than 1.4 million samples and data sets are available from around 60.000 visits (35.000 donors) for researchers and more than 620 projects have been realized using data from the LIFE project. The biobank has been able to support researchers with samples and data in more than 90 projects to date. In addition to basic research topics such as stress, allergy, heart disease and dementia, improvements have also been made in the field of diagnostics. Reference ranges of certain biomarkers in childhood, adolescence and adulthood have been investigated. These are now used at the University Hospital Leipzig.