Establishment of an H3Africa Biorepository at Clinical Laboratory Services

Project Leads

Lay Description:

Clinical Laboratory Services (a Division of the Wits Health Consortium) in Johannesburg South Africa aims to support the H3Africa project that will study diseases in African populations to gain a better understanding of factors that affect heath and diseases. CLS will do this by providing a Biorepository (also called a “biobank”) that will be responsible for receiving, processing, storing and distributing human samples used in the research projects. In the first phase of the project CLS will undertake a detailed assessment of the H3Africa Biorepository needs and ensure that its infrastructure can support the needs of H3Africa. It will also use this period to train its specialized staff in accordance with required regulations and build further links with all the H3Africa/genomic research centers. In the second phase CLS will be an active dedicated H3Africa Biorepository for H3Africa projects. It will also implement several cutting edge repository practices and technologies in order to ensure the highest care and management of H3Africa samples. All samples will be stored under conditions that are ethical, regulated and controlled by local and international standards.