The St Vincent’s Institute Biobank was established in 2015 to support the research needs of scientists and clinicians across the St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne (SVHM) campus and beyond. Housed at the National Serology Reference Lab (NRL), the Biobank operates in a quality-controlled environment according to GLP.
Our Biobank works with clinicians and researchers from a range of departments across the hospital, including Surgery, Gastroenterology, Addiction Medicine, and the St Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research. Here, we present an overview of the diverse range of studies we support across these departments, along with our working model for establishing and managing these projects. Generally, the clinician/researcher obtains informed consent from the participant, specimens are collected by SVHM pathology, and delivered to Biobank. Biobank processes, stores, manages, and distributes the samples according to standard operating procedures, informed by biobanking best practices publications and guidelines. Our ethics approval allows for collection of samples for biobanking across the SVHM campus which any clinician or researcher may apply to utilise for their research project.
We also support clinical trials undertaken at the hospital, and present here a case study of a Phase II trial in new-onset Type 1 Diabetes, the BANDIT trial. Prior to commencing this trial we undertook a pre-study comparison of Lithium heparin versus CPT blood collection tubes. We compared PBMC yield and post-thaw recovery to determine the optimal collection method to ensure fitness for intended purpose of biospecimens collected. This research was instrumental in our client’s selection of the blood collection tube utilised across the entire clinical trial.
A Biobank such as ours, positioned at the interface between clinical and research settings, has multiple and varied opportunities to support biospecimen collection and management. However, flexibility and adaptability are essential to exploit these disparate studies.