The Andalusian Health Biobank, the first in the country to be accredited in human pluripotent cell lines

The Biobank of the Public Health System of Andalusia has been the first in the country to receive the certification granted by the National Accreditation Entity (ENAC) for the deposit and transfer of human pluripotent cell lines (hPSC), an activity that it carries out as a node of the National Bank of Cell Lines (BNLC). 

This accreditation endorses the work of the Andalusian Biobank in the conservation and distribution of human pluripotent cell lines and is a recognition of its technical competence for their acquisition, preparation, preservation, storage, quality control and distribution, both in cell lines of embryonic and induced origin, for use in research. In Spain there is the legal obligation to deposit the generated human pluripotent cell lines in the BNLC, in order to guarantee their availability for biomedical research throughout the national territory. 

In this sense, this certification, which guarantees complete quality management throughout the process, also provides confidence to the users of the SSPA Biobank both from the point of view of view of the scientific community as from the donor. It also gives visibility to the activity carried out within the framework of the BNLC, promoting quality and access to resources for biomedical research in line with national and international strategies in biobanks. 

The SSPA Biobank is an initiative of the Ministry of Health and Consumption, which constitutes a support platform for specialized research in the collection, processing and storage of human biological samples and their associated data, to make them available to the scientific community, thus providing a public service that meets the needs of researchers. 

The Coordination Node, in Granada, acts as a technical and management support platform where it is also develop the cross-cutting areas of the nSIBAI information system, application management, quality, dissemination or training, in charge of coordinating all the nodes of the SSPA Biobank. The accredited activity is carried out in its facilities. 

In the year 2024, more than 90,000 samples of oncological, infectious and parasitic diseases, mental illnesses, cardiovascular, respiratory, genitourinary, etc., as well as healthy patients, using more than 58,800 of them in research and teaching projects