UNSW Biospecimen Services is a full-service facility supporting all aspects of the use of human biospecimens in research. A complete service is available, ranging from experimental planning, to the collection, processing, storage, and distribution of biospecimens, as well as management of associated data, from both targeted patient populations and healthy subjects. Biospecimen Services can assist researchers requiring bespoke, prospectively collected specimens with all necessary aspects in establishing and managing their own collections.
Under the Biospecimen Services umbrella, the Health Precincts Biobank (formerly the Health Science Alliance, (HSA) Biobank) predominately houses cancer samples, and has a robust governance process to facilitate ethical distribution of biobank specimens; leveraging existing infrastructure within UNSW Biospecimen Services, the biobank collection is expanding to include non-cancer specimens.
The Health Precincts Biobank deals with allocation of already acquired biospecimens. The biobank catalogue housed in OpenSpecimen, a secure web-based biobank database, is searchable online and can be used to initiate communications between the researcher and Biospecimen Services. This is a valuable tool that assists in determining whether the biobank or a tailored collection protocol would best suit researcher needs.
UNSW Biospecimen Services capabilities include:
Research can be supported in the following ways:
UNSW Biospecimen Services provides a range of services that reduces the burden often placed on researchers requiring access to human biospecimens and/or data for their research.