It is hoped that this infrastructure could assist in the identification of disease genes helping to understand relationships between genes, the environment, lifestyle and diseases.
More importantly, it could also allow people to realise their potential to develop specific diseases, opening the opportunity for personalised prevention programmes and treatments.
The pharmaceutical industry has paid special attention to this development as it aims to be one of the first to gain access to large collections of well-characterised samples, speeding up the development of its new drugs and personalised medicines.
The pan-EU biobanking initiative has been approximately 20 months in the making as The European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) identified 35 large-scale infrastructure projects back in October 2006.
One of these projects - The pan-European Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources Research Infrastructure (BBMRI ) - would attempt to create one of the largest collections of DNA and other human samples whilst trying to solve a number of ethical and legal issues connected with its storage and access.
A seminar held on 28 May in the European Parliament has already discussed the viability of the project taking stock of the progress made so far. Future challenges for completing BBMRI were of particular importance.
"Nobody knows what [samples] are already available in which country," said Kurt Zatloukal from the Medical University of Graz, Austria, who also criticised "the significant duplication of efforts" at EU level as well as the fragmentation of the scientific community and lack of sustainable funding.
While the initiative is set to benefit all those within the research community, the scheme raises more questions than answers. Such a valuable resource is surely open to abuse particularly if ethical and legal frameworks are not set in place in time and strictly enforced.
Of those that remain sceptical, Hervé Pero, head of the research infrastructure unit at the Research Directorate General said BBMRI now needed the member states on board, despite trust issues with the organisation, which is currently rather fragmented.
One major factor that many researchers highlighted was the cost, which could threaten the project's creation and growth unless major investment was in place to kick start it into action.
"We are talking about an average annual operational budget of some €300,000 to €1bn" once the BBMRI is in place, commented Georges Dagher, director for clinical research infrastructures at the French national health and medical research institute (INSERM).
Christian Bréchot, vice-president for medical and scientific affairs at Merieux Alliance , a biomedical industry group, added the initiative was doomed unless the member states decided to invest in it now to create a "leveraging effect" with some seed money.
The Commission is expected to present an update proposing a legal framework to allow the creation of appropriate partnerships for the establishment of pan-European research infrastructures sometime next month.
The adoption on the legal framework expected by the Council is expected to be on the agenda in Dec of this year.