BioStorage Technologies, a worldwide leader in comprehensive sample management solutions, has entered into a strategic collaboration with the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation of America (CCFA) to provide transformative technology services and pioneering sample management solutions across the full sample lifecycle comprising logistics, kitting, bioprocessing, storage and supply of samples for its novel IBD Plexus initiative.
At the beginning of 2015, the CCFA was granted an award from The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust to develop a platform of integrated knowledge with the aim of centralizing and aggregating patient data – with accompanying biosamples – across multiple research studies efforts. The innovative initiative, termed IBD Plexus, was developed to speed advancement toward precision medicine through novel research studies, with the aim of leading to better diagnostics, treatments, and eventually cures for inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), including Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.
The new platform will allow clinicians, industry, and academic researchers as well as other healthcare professionals to investigate IBD in patients of all ages. The resource will nurture partnerships among stakeholders and is driven by a shared objective of supporting better clinical care, improving treatments, and ultimately finding a cure for the diseases.
The IBD Plexus project includes a biobank, registries to capture patients clinical information, patient-reported data, biosample data (including genetic, genomic, microbiomic, among others), and a large platform for managing data, with the aim of housing, organizing, aggregating, and disseminating clinical information to help on research decisions.
Within a period of three years, databases will be built or combined with clinical data on over 40,000 patients with Crohn’s disease and colitis. This will be advanced alongside with microbial and genomic profiles from 7,000 patients who will be followed-up over time.
“We are honored to collaborate with CCFA’s IBD Plexus to support their delivery of personalized medicine to patients with IBD and the advancement of the search for the cure,” said Greg Swanberg, CEO, BioStorage Technologies in a press release.
BioStorage Technologies will provide IBD Plexus’s management and technology services. In addition, through its Bioprocessing Solutions Alliance with RUCDR Infinite Biologics, the company will be relocating a sample collection and performing DNA extraction.
“IBD Plexus will provide the infrastructure and capacities to dramatically shift the paradigm and accelerate IBD research. We are pleased to be working with BioStorage Technologies as a partner in this important initiative,” said Dr. Caren Heller, Chief Scientific Officer for CCFA.
“This project embodies the Helmsley Charitable Trust’s commitment to establishing close and productive partnerships with the organizations that offer the greatest potential to impact the areas that we support,” said Helmsley Charitable Trust trustee Sandor Frankel. “We are thrilled at the prospects of what this important new research platform can achieve in advancing therapies, care and the path to a cure for those with IBD with the support of best-in-class partners.”