A group of experts working in the ethical, scientific, and operational aspects of biobanking was assembled to identify key challenges of collecting normal biospecimens and to help develop a framework for the project. This planning group recognized that donations of normal biospecimens from living donors were rare, typically only occurring as a secondary research donation when surgery is performed for cancer treatment, limb amputation, or other surgical disease treatments. Thus it was envisioned that the GTEx biospecimens would be collected from deceased donors, due to the project's need for multiple tissues per individual donor.
