Sally Kornbluth, PhD, vice dean for basic sciences, and Mike Kastan, MD, PhD, director of the Duke Cancer Institute, share the following news.
Duke researchers will soon have the ability to locate research biospecimen collections currently at Duke through a web-based searchable database to be called the Index of Biospecimens. This effort is being spearheaded by the Duke Biobank.
The Duke Index of Biospecimens will promote research collaborations by bringing together Duke researchers in order to further realize the research potential in banked biospecimens. This initiative is aligned with the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) long held goal of a data repository of biospecimen collections along with a simple mechanism to query data about those collections. The Duke Biobank’s web tool, will look similar to the NCI’s new Specimen Resource Locator, and will allow Duke researchers to search for cancer as well as non-cancer biospecimen collections within Duke.
The Index will be ready for researchers to register their biospecimen collections in late-February 2012, and will be searchable by the Duke community in mid-March.
Duke investigators with biospecimen collections that you wish to make more widely available on a collaborative basis should contact Helena Ellis, director of the Duke Biobank for more details about listing your collection.
Look for further information here in the Medicine News as well as the SOM resource page.