de-bi in the news

February 2, 2023: Marielle Gross writes: It’s time to change the paradigm to allow patients to track their contributions to biomedical research.

In its first semester, the ILA course students assisted Pitt-affiliated biotech start-up de-bi, co., a new company working at the intersection of web3, life science, and digital health. The de-bi app applies blockchain technology to enable individuals to track the use of their biosamples, learn about their contribution to science, and be contacted if necessary.

January 26, 2023: Currently the app is a part of a pilot program launched in October 2022 at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and the University of Pittsburgh’s Institute for Precision Medicine.

January 18, 2023: While obtaining an individual's informed consent has become standard procedure before the use of tissues in medical research, many patients still don’t know what happens to their samples. Now, a new phone-based app is aiming to change that.

January 15, 2023: “At the end of the day, people’s lives could be saved [with] a pathway from the research lab back to the patient,” Gross points out. “And so that’s what we’re building.”

January 1, 2023: “We believe that patients have a right to know how their tissue samples are used. This transparency is a matter of respect for them as donors to the research enterprise,” says Amelia Hood, MA, a researcher at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics.

October 25, 2022: Tissue donors for the first time will be able to track how their samples are used by scientists while safeguarding their privacy, through a pilot program launched by Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics faculty and breast cancer researchers at the University of Pittsburgh's Institute for Precision Medicine.

October 26, 2022: Nobody would put money into a bank account that they couldn’t trace. Marielle Gross does not believe people should behave any differently with their biological samples stored in a biobank.

September 13, 2022: Dr. Marielle Gross is the founder and CEO of de-bi, a decentralized biobank. Here's where she says the blockchain and medical research studies overlap.

July 29, 2022: Dr. Gross and coauthors concluded in their JMIR Publications Research Output that continued reliance on deidentification and broad consent for the “secondary use” of biospecimens may create platforms for learning that recapitulate historically exploitative practices of integrating research and patient care.

June 21, 2022: Can a decentralized revolution in health insurance improve and expand coverage? Founder & CEO Marielle Gross is a panelist. 

April 13, 2022: Marielle Gross, who studies technology and women’s health care at the University of Pittsburgh, wants to extend the use of NFTs even further, to cover biospecimens such as tumors that are physically removed from patients or organoids created with a patient’s tissue. “There‘s really no good reason, morally speaking, why patients aren‘t the owners of their own samples and the derivatives thereof,” she says.