Dive Brief:
- Cleveland Clinic, in collaboration with Brooks Automation, is launching a biorepository in Fairfax, Cleveland. The 21,000 square foot facility will house human tissue samples related to research into a range of conditions, including cancer, heart disease and epilepsy.
- The aim is to increase the capacity of Cleveland Clinic's existing biobank, as well as speed research from bench to bedside through streamlined patient consent processes and centralized storage. The two-story building on the Cleveland Clinic campus should be complete around mid-2019.
- Brooks Life Sciences, a division of Brooks Automation, will manage onsite operations, including storing and maintaining collections of biological material. Brooks will annotate each sample within the storage facility before moving it to the new repository.
Dive Insight:
Patient tissue samples taken before, during and after experimental treatment or standard of care tell researchers a lot about the natural history of disease and the impact of different drugs. This is particularly important for a better understanding of why some patients respond to a therapy and others don't, and could lead to better development of precision medicine.
According to a report from Technavio, the global biobanking market could be worth $6.9 billion by 2021, growing at a predicted CAGR of around 9%. This is driven by improvements in technology, an increasing demand for human tissue for biomarker and drug development research, and growing use of stem cells in regenerative medicine, targeted cell therapy, and pharmacological testing on cells and tissues.
"This new biorepository will be a critical resource for our scientists. The ability to properly manage biological specimens and to compare diseased tissues side-by-side with healthy tissues, is essential to understanding the biological basis of a disease," said Serpil Erzurum, chair of Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute.
Earlier this month, the National Institutes of Health announced the beginning of enrollment of its All of Us Research Program. This will recruit a million or more people across the U.S. to create "the most diverse biomedical data resource of its kind."
This will collect data on the biological, environmental and behavioral factors that influence health and disease, from online surveys and from electronic health records (EHRs). The aim is to include people who are not traditionally involved in medical research.
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