Cleveland Clinic plans to open a two-story, 21,000-square-foot biobank facility on its campus during summer 2019.
The health system partnered with Brooks Automation, an automation and cryogenic solutions provider, to complete construction of the biobank. Brooks Life Sciences, a sample management solutions provider and division of Brooks Automation, will manage onsite operations at the facility, including storage of biological specimens.
The biobank will support Cleveland Clinic's ability to analyze patient's biological specimens by providing a centralized facility to store and manage various tissue samples. Cleveland Clinic officials hope the biobank will help the hospital advance its personalized medicine research on a range of conditions, including cancer, heart disease and epilepsy.
"Biobanking is essential for the evolution of personalized medicine," Serpil Erzurum, MD, chair of Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute, said in a May 21 statement. "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."