Saudi Biobank Project

The goal of the Saudi Biobank is to increase the quality of patient care and accelerate the impact of research on such care. It will implement the highest standards of biological banking to provide outstanding clinical, medical, demographical, and analytical data. The Saudi Biobank is designed as a longitudinal investigation of demographical and environmental factors influencing illnesses in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Biobank’s objective is to implement the highest standards of biological banking as it is vital for building genomic/proteomics databases. These databases will increase the quality of healthcare by creating a link between lifestyle, environment, and clinical practice. The biological samples at the Saudi Biobank will include buffy coat, serum, urine and tissues. The Saudi Bio-bank team is targeting 200,000 individuals and diseased subjects for fluid and solid body tissue samples, while DNA/RNA reservoir capacity is 1.8 million matrix tubes for genetic diseases seen in day-to-day clinical practice. The Saudi Biobank has launched a complete automated DNA banking system that carries out a full robotic extraction of DNA from blood, followed by banking the samples at -20˚C. The retrieval of the samples is also auto-programmed by the LIMS system.​