The launching event, as part of activities to celebrate 60 years of impactful development cooperation between Sweden and Tanzania, was held on Monday, and it involved awarding winners of the Swedish International Development Agency’s (SIDA) seed (6th cohort) grant to 20 junior faculties worth over 279m/-, cutting across various research fields.

Speaking about the support, MUHAS Acting Vice-Chancellor (VC) Prof Appolinary Kamuhabwa noted that the biorepository is dedicated to supporting research work, especially at the moment where the university is attracting more clinical trials.

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New features include:

• Participant: Soft warnings (Draft mode)
• Query: Sequence for all specimens
• Specimen print tokens for PV properties
• Managing kits
• ‘Workflow Plugin’ enhancements

Refer to the release notes for more details.

The demo site is updated with the latest release if you want to try out the new features!

Contact support@krishagni.com if you are interested in upgrading the OpenSpecimen instance at your site.

The university launched the R1.2 billion biomedical research facility on Friday, saying the new building will place it at the forefront of biomedical sciences.

The fully automated Biorepository Unit, the only one of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere, will allow the facility to store up to 3.5 million samples at – 80°C, in an automated biological storage system. This replaces chest freezers previously used and conserves energy while ensuring sample integrity.

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Endometriosis is a chronic, debilitating disease that causes pain and infertility, and is the leading cause of hysterectomies among individuals of reproductive age. While it affects 200 million female-born individuals worldwide, including 6.5 million in the United States and one out of 10 female-born people in Connecticut, much about the disease is still unknown.

The program will operate through a partnership between UConn Health and The Jackson Laboratory, an independent, nonprofit biomedical research organization. The biorepository at the core of the program will enable the collection and combination of surgical, clinical, and biological information from endometriosis patients statewide. It will foster basic research and clinical collaborations designed to help understand the disease and catalyze the advancement of new diagnostics, treatments, and cures for patients.

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New features include:

• New tokens at the visit level
• Specimen – Storage site-based specimen edit check access
• Specimen – Check in check out
• Specimen – Edit closed/disposed specimens
• Workflows Plugin: List of tasks, form and table view with validations, navigation to the previous step

Please refer to the release notes for more details.

The demo site is updated with the latest release if you want to try out the new features!

Contact support@krishagni.com if you are interested in upgrading the OpenSpecimen instance at your site.

There are four types of biological samples collected at the biorepository from a highly diverse patient population: tissue, cerebral spinal fluid (CSF), mouth swabs and removed medical device samples. These specimens are available for use by investigators through a specific protocol approval process, and de-identified data is then released through an honest broker system.

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In the United States, many Antarctic collections are held by principal investigators (PIs) funded by the National Science Foundation, who are largely unaware of data standards (e.g., Darwin Core Standard—a community-developed and evolving set of data standards established to maximize sharing, use, and reuse of biodiversity data) and protocols for specimen management (e.g., the International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories Best Practices guidelines for managing specimens). They also lack the resources to properly curate their collections. As a result, the majority of Antarctic biological specimens are invisible and inaccessible to the broader scientific community. The time has come to establish a biorepository network of Antarctic specimens for addressing the most critical questions in Antarctic science, improving human welfare, and mitigating the impacts of climate change.

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The samples, which are linked to patients’ de-identified electronic medical records (EMRs), have enabled hundreds of VUMC scientists and their collaborators to explore the genetic roots of disease, discover potential new treatments, and push the boundaries of personalized medicine.

BioVU has been “transformational” for VUMC and for genomic research, said the biobank’s founding director, Dan Roden, MD, professor of Medicine, Pharmacology and Biomedical Informatics and Senior Vice President for Personalized Medicine at VUMC, who holds the Sam L. Clark, MD, PhD Chair.

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CHAVI is the first imaging biobank exclusively dedicated to oncological imaging from India. The project has been designed as a research collaboration between Tata Medical Center, Kolkata, and IIT Kharagpur and developed as a part of the National Digital Library of India (NDLI). Its purpose is to develop an image biobank that is available across the country and to foster a foundation for future collaborative research efforts amongst major Indian cancer institutes. The project will encourage researchers, academicians, and industry experts to use the wealth of imaging data available in CHAVI.

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The project aims to provide bioinformation to researchers looking to make medical breakthroughs in the future. To incentivize participation, subjects are paid $25 and given access to their personal ancestry tree for compensation when they give a blood or saliva sample, which will then be stored in the MY PART central biorepository. Participants were also asked to fill out a variety of questionnaires regarding their health information.  

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