Biobanking-Related Research for Solid Organ Transplant Patients

Project Summary

The BC Children’s Hospital BioBank (BCCH BioBank) provides a comprehensive service for the collection, processing, storage, rapid access and retrieval of biospecimens and medical information for research projects using a professional and compassionate approach to patient consenting that adheres to the highest standards of research ethics and patient privacy.

The Multi Organ Transplant Program is enrolling patients into the BCCH BioBank, using the standard procedures of the biobank. These are children who have received a solid organ transplant (SOT) and are being followed at BC Children’s Hospital. These samples are meant to be accessible to any researcher who would like to utilize samples from this patient population for research purposes, provided they have independent ethics approval.

The Biobanking-Related Research for Solid Organ Transplant Patients is meant to serve as an umbrella project to coordinate from an administrative perspective the consenting of participants, sampling frequency, collection of samples and any particular processing requirements that will optimize the future utilization of samples. Included in this regard is the special nature of some types of transplant related samples such as those originating from kidney donors, which may need to be coordinated with BC Transplant who act as steward for these donated samples.

It provides clarity on linkage opportunities to other transplant research projects, such as the solid organ transplant registry (HOPE SOT). It will support biobanking-related processes such as consent to the BCCH BioBank in this population, which may be resourced by grant funding.

Lastly, it provides a mechanism to allocate funding via the UBC Office of Research Services in support. Currently, a single source of research funds is accessible to support development of this initiative (The TRACE Project), but this program will seek additional funding if needed to sustain access to the BCCH BioBank for SOT recipients into the future.

This is not a separate biobank. Rather this program provides a framework for undertaking research that seeks to utilize samples biobanked with the BCCH BioBank from SOT recipients. Research ethics review of projects that seek to utilize samples stored in the BCCH BioBank from SOT recipients may be facilitated by linkage to this REB application, which in turn is linked to the BCCH BioBank.

This is a database registry being built by Dr. Tom Blydt-Hansen's research team at BC Children's Hospital Research Institute. Dr. Tom Blydt-Hansen is the principal investigator.

This project is being funded by BC Children`s Hospital Foundation (Mining for Miracles).

Project Status

Status: Active, data collection ongoing
Study Start Date: January 25, 2018

Study Enrolment Status: Actively enrolling 

Project Team

Principal Investigator

Tom Blydt-Hansen
 
Co-Investigators

Dr. Suzanne Vercauteren

Research Team Members

Candice Wiedman, Research Assistant
Shirin Kalyan, Adjunct Professor
Brittany Seligman, M&P Staff
Manish Sadarangani, Associate Professor

Enrolment Eligibility Criteria

The Multi Organ Transplant Program is enrolling patients into the BCCH BioBank, using the standard procedures of the biobank. These are children who have received a solid organ transplant (SOT) and are being followed at BC Children’s Hospital. These samples are meant to be accessible to any researcher who would like to utilize samples from this patient population for research purposes, provided they have independent ethics approval.

For more information, please email sotresearch@bcchr.ca.