Biobank Automation: Freezer Boxes to ABB Robots

A biobank stores human samples such as blood, urine, saliva and tissue, together with data about the people who gave them, so researchers can study disease years later. Biobank automation is the use of robotic stores and handling systems to keep millions of small tubes frozen and to find the right ones on request. This post looks at how samples were frozen and stored by hand, how the first robotic stores were built, what is happening with biobanks in 2026, and where ABB lab robots could help with the work around the freezers.

Liquid nitrogen storage tanks in the biobank of the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, 2025. Photo: Romainbehar / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

How cryobiology filled the first freezers by hand

Keeping cells alive in the cold took a long run of laboratory work. In 1953 James Lovelock proposed that red blood cells were damaged during freezing by osmotic stress. The next year, three pregnancies resulted from insemination with sperm that had been frozen, the start of human cryopreservation. In 1957 Christopher Polge's team in Britain froze fowl sperm, and in 1963 Peter Mazur showed that cooling cells slowly lets enough water leave them to avoid deadly ice crystals forming inside. After that, freezing human material for years was a practical option.

James Lovelock in 2005. In 1953 he proposed that freezing damages red blood cells through osmotic stress. Photo: Bruno Comby / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 1.0)

The storage itself stayed manual for decades. Samples went into small tubes, the tubes into cardboard or plastic boxes, and the boxes into steel racks inside chest freezers or tanks of liquid nitrogen, which boils at minus 196 degrees Celsius. Staff wrote labels by hand and kept track of positions in notebooks and later spreadsheets. Finding one tube meant opening a freezer and lifting out a whole rack, and every time a door opened, the samples near it warmed a little. A tube with a smudged or wrong label could be lost for good.

Steel freezer racks of the kind that hold boxes of cryovial tubes. Photo: Ajay Kumar Chaurasiya / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Large studies forced a change. UK Biobank, founded in Stockport in 2003, set out to collect samples from 500,000 volunteers aged 40 to 69, and it reached that target in 2010. In 2004 it invited The Automation Partnership, or TAP, to tender for a robotic store. TAP wrote that no one had built anything that size, so most hardware was custom made, including robots able to store or pick up to 2,000 samples a day at minus 80 degrees. The store is cooled by liquid nitrogen and keeps samples in shallow drawers, so only the opened drawer warms.

UK Biobank's headquarters in Stockport, with liquid nitrogen tanks outside, 2022. Photo: Chemical Engineer / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Biobank networks and robotic stores in 2026

Biobanks are now being linked up. On 24 September 2026 TV BRICS reported that Brazil's Ministry of Health had created a national biobank network, the RBBMS, to support research for the public health system, the SUS. Participation is voluntary and open to 108 biobanks approved by the national research ethics system, and the ministry's science and technology secretariat will run the network. Its plans include training, shared guidelines and joint studies across several centres, and stored samples may be used for future research that was not planned when they were collected, if consent and ethics rules allow.

Empty sample storage cases at the Estonian Biobank, 2024. Photo: Koidres / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

UK Biobank shows the scale such networks may reach. A procurement notice from November 2025 says it holds over 17 million samples of plasma, serum, buffy coat, DNA, urine and saliva. About 11 million are kept at minus 80 degrees in an automated storage system and manual freezers in Stockport, and about 6 million sit in liquid nitrogen tanks at a backup site in the south of England. Requests range from a handful of cherry picked tubes to whole cohort sets of around 500,000, and the notice asks for automated liquid handlers to prepare samples for researchers.

A liquid nitrogen tank at the USDA's genetic resources preservation centre, 2013. Photo: USDA via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

ABB has no announced biobank customer, so its role is a possibility. Its healthcare work so far is in laboratories: in October 2019 it opened a healthcare research hub at the Texas Medical Center in Houston, and it has shown a mobile YuMi concept that loads centrifuges. XtalPi has built automated lab workstations with GoFa cobots. Around a biobank, arms like these could open and close tubes, scan barcodes, sort racks and load the input port of a frozen store at room temperature. Our post on hospital lab automation covers similar tasks in clinical labs.

A GoFa cobot at ABB's healthcare research hub. Photo: ABB

Where automated sample storage is heading

More networks mean more samples moving between sites, and every move is a chance to lose or warm a tube. The likely direction is fully tracked chains: 2D barcodes on each tube, robotic stores that log every pick, and robots that prepare shipments so people handle racks less. Robot arms work best in the room temperature zone around the freezers. Inside the store, at minus 80 degrees or colder, mechanisms have to be designed for the cold from the start, which is why TAP built custom hardware for UK Biobank.

Inside the IARC biobank in Lyon, where samples are kept in liquid nitrogen tanks, 2025. Photo: Romainbehar / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Cost is a real brake. A robotic store is a long term commitment, and the UK Biobank system was designed to run for 25 years, so a biobank has to plan for spare parts, liquid nitrogen supply and staff who can maintain it. Smaller biobanks in a network like Brazil's may not afford a large automated store, so shared facilities or simpler bench automation may suit them better. Decisions about consent, data protection and ethics approval stay with people, whatever machine fetches the tube.

ABB's mobile YuMi concept loading a centrifuge. Photo: ABB

Homes come into it as well. Saliva is already on UK Biobank's list of samples, and it is the kind a person can give without a needle. If more studies post collection kits to people's homes, someone has to open, check and log every returned parcel, which is repetitive bench work a cobot could do. In factories, the companies that build freezers, stores and liquid handlers need precise assembly and testing, where small ABB robots such as the IRB 1100 or a GoFa already work in other industries. Cells like these are usually laid out and tested first in RobotStudio.

An ABB GoFa cobot working with lab instruments at the SLAS lab automation conference. Photo: ABB

Innovation

AI solutions for effortless ABB robot control.

Automation

Robotics

ceojohntran@chatwithrobot.net

+84905311611

© 2025. All rights reserved.

qtran1215@gmail.com