Quality management and standardization have become increasingly important in biomedical research. The quality of the material has substantial impact, especially, when molecular biological material is exchanged between groups and is fed into high-throughput experiments. The exchange and comparability of data and information strictly depends on common standards that need to be established and adopted in the production processes of resources and in their exploitation in experimentation. Tested and standardized protocols increase efficiency when different laboratories contribute to the same resource, or when different labs use the same resource and experimental results are to be compared.
For this reason, since the end of 2003 the German National Genome Research Network (NGFN) has been building up a comprehensive quality management (QM) system. Apart from assuring optimal data exchange, the QM measures aim to ensure that all materials and results produced within the NGFN maintain the same high quality. The respective quality standards follow international guidelines, if such exist. Many work steps have already been standardized and documented for the entire NGFN network, including techniques to produce samples and to process microarrays. These standards improve the quality of the results and ensure the transparency of experimental procedures. They are intended to be used by as many partners as possible in the NGFN on the basis of voluntary self-commitment. Standard protocols as well as the emerging standards for genomics experiments will be continually published on the web-pages of the quality management platform of the National Genome Research Network.
Quality management in the NGFN is a continuing process. To further optimize the quality and reproducibility of the research results, additional quality assurance strategies are being developed in regularly scheduled workshops.
Currently seven working groups are concerned with QM in the following fields:
Quality Management in the NGFN
Clinic, Data Management and Data Analysis
Quality management coordinator:
Christian Lawerenz
German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ)
Div. "Intelligent Bioinformatics Systems" (iBioS)
Phone: + 49 6221 422724
E-Mail: c.lawerenz@dkfz.de
Christian Lawerenz
German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ)
Div. "Intelligent Bioinformatics Systems" (iBioS)
Phone: + 49 6221 422724
E-Mail: c.lawerenz@dkfz.de
Genotyping
Quality management coordinator:
Dominik Seelow
Cologne Center for Genomics
Universität Köln
Phone: + 49 30 32639 210
E-Mail: dominik.seelow@uni-koeln.de
Dominik Seelow
Cologne Center for Genomics
Universität Köln
Phone: + 49 30 32639 210
E-Mail: dominik.seelow@uni-koeln.de
Microarrays
Quality management coordinator:
Dr. Holger Sültmann
German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ)
Div. of Molecular Genome Analysis
Phone: + 49 6221 424705
E-Mail: h.sueltmann@dkfz.de
Dr. Holger Sültmann
German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ)
Div. of Molecular Genome Analysis
Phone: + 49 6221 424705
E-Mail: h.sueltmann@dkfz.de
Generation of Open Reading Frame (ORF) Resources
Quality management coordinator:
Dr. Stefan Wiemann
German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ)
Div. of Molecular Genome Analysis
Phone: + 49 6221 424702
E-Mail: s.wiemann@dkfz.de
Dr. Stefan Wiemann
German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ)
Div. of Molecular Genome Analysis
Phone: + 49 6221 424702
E-Mail: s.wiemann@dkfz.de
Functional Assays, Cell Cultures
Quality management coordinator:
Dr. Stefan Wiemann
German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ)
Div. of Molecular Genome Analysis
Phone: + 49 6221 424702
E-Mail: s.wiemann@dkfz.de
Dr. Stefan Wiemann
German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ)
Div. of Molecular Genome Analysis
Phone: + 49 6221 424702
E-Mail: s.wiemann@dkfz.de
Protein Analysis
Quality management coordinator:
Dr. Patrick Umbach
Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch
Phone: + 49 30 9406 4231
E-Mail: p.umbach@mdc-berlin.de
Dr. Patrick Umbach
Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch
Phone: + 49 30 9406 4231
E-Mail: p.umbach@mdc-berlin.de
Animal Models
Quality management coordinator:
Dr. Helmut Fuchs
National Research Center for Environment and Health (GSF), Neuherberg near Munich
Phone: +49 89 3187 3151
E-Mail: h.fuchs@gsf.de
Dr. Helmut Fuchs
National Research Center for Environment and Health (GSF), Neuherberg near Munich
Phone: +49 89 3187 3151
E-Mail: h.fuchs@gsf.de