This project aims at building a coordinated, large scale European infrastructure of biomedically relevant, quality-assessed mostly already collected samples (with the possibility to link to related clinical and epidemiological information), to enhance therapy and prevention of common and rare diseases, including cancer. In this area of unique European strength, valuable and irreplaceable national collections typically suffer from underutilisation due to fragmentation. Major synergism, gain of statistical power and economy of scale will be achieved by interlinking, standardising and harmonising - sometimes even just cross-referencing - a large variety of well-qualified, up-to date, existing and de novo national resources. The network should cover (1) major European biobanks with blood, serum, tissue or other biological samples, (2) molecular methods resource centres for human and model organisms of biomedical relevance, (3) and biocomputing centres to ensure that databases of samples in the repositories are dynamically linked to existing databases and to scientific literature as well as to statistical expertise.