Peter van Mourik

192 Chapter 9 a large range of mutations that is accessible for researchers worldwide 8 , while in parallel the HIT-CF Europe project will generate a biobank of 500 unique intestinal organoids of patients with two rare mutations (chapters 5 and 8) . Moreover, other research laboratories such as at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven have set up similar biobanks for researching CF (K. de Boeck, personal correspondence). While these biobanks are currently separate collections, their potential strength rests in their sample diversity, widespread accessibility and linkage to clinical data. This is especially true in CF, where even individual biobanks of more than 500 samples will not contain all the known CFTR variants. Therefore, creating combined databases of biobanks and large clinical datasets such as (inter)national patient registries would strongly increase the impact 74 . This approach is currently being pioneered in the Netherlands, where we are exploring the possibility of linking the organoid biobank to the Dutch Patient Registry. Moreover, combining existing organoid data to the CFTR2 database could aid knowledge on genotype-phenotype correlations. Future projects should focus on biobanking unique tissues and seek collaborations with existing biobanks/datasets to ensure maximum impact is thereby generated. Figure 3. Combining biobanks and clinical data to support clinical care decisions