BioVU Plasma Storage Equipment

Roden, Dan

Abstract

The creation of high-dimensional resources to facilitate proteomics and genomics research propels basic, clinical and translational sciences forward in the effort to realize the vision of Personalized Medicine. Vanderbilt University Medical has internationally-recognized strengths in translational sciences and has identified the advancement of Personalized Medicine as an effort of highest priority and as an institutional platform for excellence across clinical and basic science departments. A key step in the realization of Personalized Medicine is the facilitation of studies to associate biomarkers with disease risk or progression and response to drug therapy. These studies require generation of large databases with detailed human phenotype information linked to plasma samples. BioVU, Vanderbilt's large-scale biorepository, contains detailed de-identified human phenotype information linked to de-identified DNA samples and genotypes. BioVU is expanding the biorepository to collect plasma samples and link them to de- identified clinical information. The plasma bank will have broad utility among a diverse set of scientific investigators. The greatest value will be for the screening of candidate biomarkers associated with disease risk or response to drug therapy, including efficacy, adverse reactions and toxicity. The availability of plasma samples linked to de-identified clinical records will enable the development of more sophisticated designs to evaluate real world utility of biomarkers and also support an increasing number of biomarker development studies. To meet this goal, specialized instrumentation for sample storage and retrieval is necessary to handle the thousands of resultant plasma samples. To preserve the integrity of the plasma samples and prevent degradation, an automated freezer is required to process samples at -20oC, and store the samples at - 80oC, thereby preventing repeated freeze-thaw cycles that can diminish sample quality. This automated instrument will be an enabling device to further cutting edge translational science research toward the goal of Personalized Medicine.