#EBW26 Previews: 8D: Synergising resources: Public–private collaboration in biobanking infrastructure and research
This session highlights how public–private collaborations in biobanking drive innovation by combining strategic vision with practical implementation. Participants will explore how shared resources, expertise and technology – together with effective contracting models, fair valuation and compliance-by-design – can build sustainable research platforms and create lasting value for health research across Europe.
Highlight speaker: Dr. Gaia Cantelli – NURTuRE: Biobanking as community infrastructure
Bio: Dr. Gaia Cantelli is the Director of Data Science and NURTuRE at Kidney Research UK. She previously led strategic research environment programmes at The Open University, Europe’s largest university. Before that, she worked in data infrastructure strategy at the European Bioinformatics Institute and in broader life‑science infrastructure development at EMBL.
Abstract: This session introduces the National Unified Renal Translational Research Enterprise (NURTuRE), the UK’s first national kidney biobank, purpose‑built as a research infrastructure to enable scalable, high‑quality data reuse. NURTuRE integrates harmonised biospecimen collections with comprehensive, linkable longitudinal data across kidney disease. By uniting academic, NHS, and industry partners within a single governance and standards framework, NURTuRE transforms traditional biobanking into an engine for continuous, reproducible discovery. Attendees will learn how trusted research environments, interoperable datasets, and coordinated access pathways maximise scientific value and demonstrate how infrastructure‑led biobanking can support future‑ready data ecosystems across Europe.
Speakers included in this session:
- Sara Nussbeck – Public-private collaboration in action: Building a sustainable national biobank platform in Germany
- Johanna Mäkelä – Public-private collaboration in Finnish Biobanks
- Miriam Beusink – “It’s very complicated to trust companies when you feel like: I don’t have the right information!” How can research infrastructures facilitate research by companies in ways that align with citizens’ expectations?
This session will be chaired by:
Dr. Eleni Fthenou
Dr. Eleni Fthenou received her PhD from the Medical School of the University of Crete, Greece and her BSc in Genetics (Immunology) from the University of Aberdeen in the UK. She has worked at the Department of Health Research Governance at the Ministry of Public Health in Qatar, and she was highly involved in the development of Qatar’s national policies, regulations, and guidelines of health research for a safe and innovative research ecosystem in the country.
She has also worked as a scientist at the Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), Barcelona, Spain, focusing her research on molecular epidemiology and the exposome. She was a Manager of the Clinical Nutrition and Epidemiology of Diseases Laboratory, at the Department of Social Medicine and Epidemiology, School of Medicine, University of Crete, Greece, designing and developing the biobank for the first mother-child cohort (Rhea study) in Greece.
Currently she holds the position of Scientific Projects Director at Qatar Precision Health Institute focusing on the science of biobanking committed to the promotion of research in precision health, environmental epidemiology, and the translation of research findings into policy. She is the Lead PI of the Qatari Birth Cohort (QBiC) study in Qatar and her main research interest is in gene-environment interactions and molecular epidemiology.
Dr. Sara Nussbeck
Dr. Sara Nussbeck is the German National Node Director for BBMRI-ERIC and spokesperson for the German Biobank Network in her third year now. She has been leading the working group on education and training in the German Biobank Network since 2017. In her daily work she heads the Central Biobank at University Medical Center Göttingen.
Session details:
- Date: Thursday 21 May
- Time: 13:45 – 15:15