The purpose of this article is to highlight the new advancements in molecular and diagnostic genetic testing and to properly classify all ovarian cancers. In this article, we address statistics, histopathological classification, molecular pathways implicated in ovarian cancer, genetic screening panels, details about the genes, and also candidate genes. We hope to bring new information to the medical field so as to better prevent and diagnose ovarian cancer.

The purpose of this article is to highlight the new advancements in molecular and diagnostic genetic testing as well as properly classify all ovarian cancers. In this article we address statistics, histopathological classification, molecular pathways implicated in ovarian cancer, genetic screening panels and details about the genes, and also candidate genes. We hope to bring new information in the medical field as to better prevent and diagnose ovarian cancer.

Molecular pathology-driven oncologic diagnostics—genomic profiling, transcriptomics, proteomics, and, increasingly, artificial intelligence applied to tissue and liquid biopsy—can only be as accurate as the biospecimens on which they are performed. Biobanks are the infrastructures that secure this foundation, linking donors, biological samples, and data to discovery and, through the pathology interface, back to diagnosis. Their scientific and diagnostic value, however, is determined less by the number of specimens stored than by the rigor of the guidelines under which those specimens are collected, processed, annotated, governed, and shared. The normative landscape has changed considerably in the last three years: the ISBER Best Practices reached their fifth edition (2023), the NCI Best Practices were comprehensively revised (2026), the Standard PREanalytical Code (SPREC) was updated to version 4.0 (2024/2025), MIABIS Core reached version 3.0 (2024), the 2024 revision of the Declaration of Helsinki explicitly anchored biobank governance to the Declaration of Taipei, the European Health Data Space Regulation (EU) 2025/327 entered into force, and ISO 20387—the accreditation standard for biobanks—is undergoing its first full revision. This review synthesizes the current (2026) status of international biobanking standards, ethical and legal frameworks, pre-analytical and quality management requirements, data and interoperability standards, and sustainability models, drawing on more than 200 sources with emphasis on the 2023–2026 literature. Standards are presented not as an inventory but as an operational system, organized along the biobanking workflow from donor consent to sample distribution and impact tracking. On this basis, we propose a phased, guideline-anchored roadmap and a start-up checklist to help new teams establish a real-world biobank—particularly hospital-integrated biobanks in settings without a mature national biobanking infrastructure—and we review comprehensively the financial, operational, regulatory, and societal challenges that determine whether a new biobank thrives or stalls. Particular attention is given to the specimen classes and quality controls on which molecular tumor diagnostics depend—FFPE tissue and its sequencing artifacts, fresh-frozen tissue, liquid biopsy analytes, and DV200-gated derivative quality—and to the interface between research biobanking and the accredited diagnostic laboratory, which is set out explicitly because the two are governed by different standards. We further provide explicit, endpoint-specific operational control of warm and cold ischemia, a quality-control framework for advanced patient-derived models (xenografts and organoids) and their interface with dedicated model cores, an explicit statement of the evidence underlying the practical recommendations, and a dedicated limitations section. The review is intended as a reference piece for biobankers, pathologists, clinician-researchers, quality managers, and institutional decision-makers building the biobanks on which the coming decade of precision oncology will depend.