The Rare Disease Bank of Japan

Research on rare diseases cannot be performed without appropriate samples from patients with such diseases. Due to the limited number of such patients, securing biosamples of sufficient quality for extensive research is a challenge and represents an important barrier to the advancement of research on rare diseases. To tackle this problem, the Rare Disease Bank (RDB) was established in 2009 in Japan. As of August 2017, the bank has collected 4147 biosamples from patients with rare diseases, including DNA, serum, plasma, and cell samples from various university hospitals and other medical institutions across the country. To read more about RBD, please click here.