Human Developmental Biology Resource (HDBR): meeting new trends and challenges in developmental biobanking

The Human Developmental Biology Resource (HDBR) is a fetal biobanking partnership between Newcastle University and University College London. Human embryonic/fetal tissues (4-22 post-conception weeks) are collected, stored and distributed for human developmental research. Use of human fetal tissue is expanding, with single-cell gene expression analysis and novel cell lineage studies (e.g. barcoding in slice cultures). Human fetal material is needed to validate findings on cell/organ differentiation from human pluripotent stem cells and organoids. Building on feedback from a 2022 HDBR user survey (72 respondents), HDBR will: (i) continue to provide high-quality biobanking of human embryonic/fetal tissues; (ii) evolve its services to meet changing research needs. Specific aims are to: - Develop ‘research clinics’ to future-proof HDBR’s collection of early-stage embryonic tissues against recent supply issues - Extend biobanking into late fetal and early childhood periods – a hard-to-access period of human development - Provide more specialist dissections of embryonic/fetal samples, as increasingly requested - Expand collection of prenatally-diagnosed abnormal (TOPFA) samples for research into congenital defects - Establish Spatial Transcriptomics as a fully cost-recovered HDBR service - Enhance the HDBR Atlas of publicly available human gene expression patterns, annotated histological and 3D images as a research and educational resource.