This paper provides several definitions of the term "biobank"; a list of standards developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) applicable to the activities of biobanks; analyzes the legal and ethical requirements; the Russian legal framework in the field of biobanking, the best international practices and recommendations; describes the experience of the development and implementation of quality management systems according to ISO 9001 in Biobanks established in different countries, and the experience of the Bank of Biological Material of the National Medical Research Center for Preventive Medicine of the Ministry of Healthcare of Russia. The ISO 20387 Biobanking Standard, released in August 2018, combined the knowledge and experience of specialists from around the world and defined the general requirements that must be fulfilled by biobanks and repositories wishing to guarantee their customers the high quality of the preanalytical stage of scientific research, biological samples and associated data. In 2019, the Russian version of this standard is expected. Documents of the quality management system provide the reproducibility of activities on the main storage processes and facilitates the process of incorporating a new employee; conducting internal and external audits; Biobank knowledge management - continuous staff education. The introduction of an effective quality management system into biobank activity warrants the high quality of biological samples, the standardized pre-analytical stage, reliable, regulated long-term storage of biomaterial and related information for use in research purposes today and in future.
Keywords: biobank; biobanking; quality; quality control; quality management system.