Cleveland Clinic and Brooks Automation, Chelmsford, Mass, plan to open a 21,000-square-foot biorepository in Cleveland’s Fairfax neighborhood to enhance researchers’ study of human tissue samples and advance personalized medicine for an array of conditions, including cancer, epilepsy, and heart disease. The state-of-the-art facility will increase Cleveland Clinic’s existing biobanking capacity and accelerate translational research through streamlined patient consent processes and centralized storage.
Serpil Erzurum, MD, Cleveland Clinic.
“This new biorepository will be a critical resource for our scientists. Biobanking is essential for the evolution of personalized medicine. 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,” says Serpil Erzurum, MD, chair of the Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute. “As a leading healthcare organization, this provides an unparalleled opportunity to advance understanding of many different diseases, enabling us to make discoveries that are directly benefitting our patients.”
The two-story building will be located on the Cleveland Clinic’s campus and is expected to be completed in summer 2019. Brooks Life Sciences, a division of Brooks Automation, will manage the facility’s onsite operations, including storage and maintenance of high-value collections of biological materials. Operations will begin with the launch of a sample inventory process that will annotate each sample within the current storage facility, before moving materials to the new biorepository.
Dusty Tenney, Brooks Life Sciences
“With an international reputation as a leader in medical research, Cleveland Clinic understands the value sample management plays in medical research, and is committed to improving patient outcomes,” says Dusty Tenney, president of Brooks Life Sciences. “We are extremely proud to be partnering with Cleveland Clinic to manage the operations of its new biobank and to offer our expertise in sample management.”
For more information, visit Brooks Life Sciences and Cleveland Clinic.
