Mayo Clinic and the Center for Individualized Medicine have made a significant commitment to building a world-class, scalable biorepository infrastructure, which includes two specimen processing core laboratories and several large centralized biospecimen collections.

One of these biospecimen collections is the Mayo Clinic Biobank, a collection of samples, including blood and blood derivatives, and health information donated by Mayo Clinic patients. Unlike many biobanks in existence at Mayo Clinic and elsewhere, the Mayo Clinic Biobank is not focused on any particular disease. Rather, the Biobank collects samples and health information from patients and other volunteers regardless of health history. Once a participant becomes a part of the Biobank, he or she becomes a part of ongoing health research.