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BIOBANK PROFILE
The Infectious Diseases BioBank (IDB)at King’s College London, United Kingdom
Introduction
The Infectious Diseases BioBank (IDB) was establishedfollowing the awards of grants from the Guy’s and
St. Thomas’ Charity and subsequently the UK’s NationalInstitute of Health Research comprehensive Biomedical Re-search Centre (NIHR cBRC) at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ Hos-pitals. Physically, the IDB is located at Guy’s Hospital inSouth East London and includes a local catchment area that hassignificant levels of infectious diseases resulting from high levelsof immigration and poverty. Indeed, 1% of pregnant womenattending to deliver babies at St. Thomas’ Hospital are positivefor human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and 2% are alreadyinfected with hepatitis B. Consequently our interests reflectthese local problems as well as the interests of local NHS andUniversity researchers, with major collections of blood fractions(live lymphocytes, sera, plasma, DNA and RNA) from patientsinfected with HIV, hepatitis B or C as well as bacteremias. Themajor collection features longitudinal samples from HIV pa-tients with particularly interesting clinical disease features (e.g.,those who have either a very slow or fast progression to disease,the new seroconverters etc.). These samples are primarily col-lected from tissue collection centres (TCC) located at Guy’s, St.Thomas’ and Kings College Hospitals, with new TCCs openingin 2012 at St. Mary’s and the Chelsea and Westminster Hospitalsin London. The TCCs obtain (broad) informed consent frompatients (infants, children or adults) attending routine appoint-ments to enable virtually any type of research to be performed.They also collect research (blood, urine or feces) or residual di-agnostic (any type) samples and anonymize them with exten-sive clinical details before couriering the samples to the IDB forfractionation and preservation. All infectious samples are han-dled in a Category III laboratory and the IDB has a DNA/RNAextraction robot to isolate nucleic acids.
Researchers (academic or industrial) wishing to access thesamples fill in a simple two-page application form which islocated on the IDB website (http://www.kcl.ac.uk/medi-cine/research/divisions/diiid/about/facilities/biobank/index.aspx). Applications are reviewed by the IDB’s scientific/ethical committee. This includes scientists, clinicians, a repre-sentative of the funding body, and a patient representative.Successful applicants do not have to obtain any other per-missions (e.g., from NHS research and development com-mittees, ethics permissions or a UK human tissue license) towork on and store these samples for a period of three years.Applicants may be asked to pay a processing charge, and a setof tiered charges for different fractions is available on request.Researchers are required to sign a materials transfer agree-ment, confirm that all samples have been used up at the end
of their permission, and provide raw experimental data backto the IDB. The great challenge to the IDB is collating the data,and a state of the art laboratory information managementsystem is currently under construction for the IDB.
The IDB has more recently expanded to include: (i) otherinflammatory diseases of adults and of children; (ii) a pro-cessing center for the human immune response dynamicsstudy (a longitudinal study of subjects immunized with in-fluenza vaccine; and (iii) custodianship of samples from theHIV SPARTAC trial.
Site location: Guy’s Hospital London SE1 9RT
Contact info:
Web: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/medicine/research/divisions/diiid/about/facilities/biobank/index.aspx
E-mail: [email protected]: John Cason, IDB Director
Date of operations (date of formal start of current bankoperation): December 2006
Date range of cases: December 2006 to present
Category of biobank: Translational/Clinical
Focus of biobank: Infectious/inflammatory diseases, notably:
� Human immunodeficiency virus: *400 patients followedlongitudinally (*1,500 patient visits)
� Hepatitis B: 200 patients� Hepatitis C: 200 patients� Invasive bacteremias: 250 patients� Uninfected controls: 200 subjects� Children with pre-multiple sclerosis syndrome: 40 pa-
tients� Systemic lupus erythematosus: 65 patients
Membership of biobanks (networks, affiliations): ESBB:European, Middle East and African Society for Biopre-servation and BioBanking; CHERUB: Collaborative HIVEradication of Reservoirs; SPARTAC: Short Pulse Anti Ret-roviral Therapy at HIV Seroconversion; HIRD: Human Im-mune Response Dynamics
Major source of funding:
Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity
National Institute of Health Research comprehensiveBiomedical Research Centre (NIHR cBRC) at Guy’s andSt Thomas’ Hospitals
BIOPRESERVATION AND BIOBANKINGVolume 10, Number 3, 2012ª Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.DOI: 10.1089/bio.2012.1032
295
Proportional funding sources for biobank:
Institutional core budget: 0%Grants: 75%Other: 25%
Example input statistics (bank as a whole):
Total number patient visits: 2,455% cases with DNA: 100%% cases plasmas: 100%% cases sera: 20%% cases live lymphocytes: 20%% cases urine: 5%% cases CSF: 0.05%
Example output statistics:
Number of ongoing ethical permissions for studies: 17Approximate numbers of samples released: 2,500 speci-
mens from 200 donorsPublications in the past year (based on biobank and users): 7
In your view, what are the most valuable/highest prioritycases in your biobanks?
Those with complete longitudinal sets of samples fromHIV patients with full clinical details, viral sequence data,and HLA types.
What are your major challenges?
1. Insecure funding.2. Data storage/manipulation (clinical data combined
with gene array data).
What would you do with $1 million to improve the value
of your biobanks?
Obtain further technical assistance and a data manager tocollate the inexorable amount of information that is accruingon the HIV infected patients.
Address correspondence to:John Cason
IDB Director
Zisis KozlakidisIDB Manager
The Infectious Diseases BioBankSecond floor Borough Wing
Guy’s HospitalKings College London
London SE19RT
E-mail: [email protected]@kcl.ac.uk
296 BIOBANK PROFILE
