Global Biorepository of Human Tissue Samples

Biorepositories (a.k.a. biobanks) contribute to medical and scientific advancements by providing researchers with access to a diverse range of biological materials. These materials are valuable for studying diseases, identifying biomarkers, developing treatments, validating diagnostic methods, and advancing personalized medicine.

The global biorepository at REPROCELL(Bioserve) which has over 600,000 biospecimen consisting of fresh frozen tumor and normal adjacent tissues, whole blood, serum, plasma, DNA, RNA and Formalin Fixed Paraffin Embedded (FFPE) blocks from both tumor and normal tissues and various diseases has helped the researchers in identifying many biomarkers and validating diagnostic methods. Samples in our repository were collected from 120,000 unique donors on four different continents, under a strict Institutional Review Board (IRB). All the donors were consented, and samples can be used for medical research, commercial research, nucleic acid analysis, such as sequencing and expression analysis. All the samples are anonymized with no link to the donor.

Above: ultra low temperature freezers containing part of our biorepository.

The global biorepository at REPROCELL(Bioserve) is one of the largest commercial biorepositories in the world. We have over 600,000 biospecimens collected on four different continents consisting of various nationalities and ethnicities. Each sample has extensive demographic data including three generations of ethnicity and clinical information collected using a Case Report Form (CRF). All the fresh frozen tissues are stored in liquid nitrogen freezers in the vapor phase at −190° C, serum, plasma, and RNA are stored in −80°C freezers, DNAs are stored in −20°C and FFPE block are stored at room temperature. All our freezers and other temperature-controlled units are on back-up power and monitored daily. Following are the disease types and material available in our repository:

✓ indicates the samples we have in our inventory.

Controls: REPROCELL (Bioserve) has a collection of healthy control samples that can be matched for age, gender, ethnicity, smoking status, body mass index, etc., as required by the study. This provides researchers to conduct case control studies. The control population in our collection has the same data that provides detailed demographic data as our diseased collections. Our information technology (IT) professionals can provide matched control samples based on researchers’ request.

Human Tissues: All the tissues were collected twenty minutes after the arterial ligation and flash frozen immediately. Two pathologists have verified the diagnosis and the H&E-stained slides are available for verification. All the tissues are stored frozen in the liquid nitrogen vapor phase. These tissues have never been thawed. RNA extracted from these tissues consistently has an RNA integrity number (RIN) value of over 7.0.