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Europe's network of biobanks, the places that store blood, tissue and DNA donated by patients and volunteers for research. It runs a public directory where researchers can find which biobank holds samples from people with a given cancer, and how to ask for them.
BBMRI-ERIC describes itself as the European research infrastructure for biobanking and biomolecular resources, set up in 2013 and headquartered in Graz, Austria. Its about page, read on 4 November 2026, gives its size two ways: "28 Member and Observer Countries plus IARC/WHO and around 500 biobanks" in one paragraph and "25 countries and one international organisation" in another. Its services cover access to samples and data, quality management and an audit programme, ethical, legal and societal issues (ELSI), IT, training and a helpdesk.
For a researcher the working tool is the BBMRI-ERIC Directory, a searchable catalogue of member biobanks and their collections, each with the diagnoses (as ICD-10 codes), material types and approximate sizes the biobank reports. On 4 November 2026 the directory's data endpoint returned 852 biobanks and 5,951 collections; 186 of those biobanks list at least one collection with a cancer or neoplasm diagnosis (ICD-10 C or D00-D48), which is how the gap census counted them. A patient who has given tissue at a European hospital may find that hospital's biobank here.
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