Govt opens India’s first biobank for heart failure research

The National Heart Failure Biobank (NHFB), which would collect blood, biopsies, and clinical data as a guide to future therapies, was recently inaugurated at the Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology ( SCTIMST) in Thiruvananthapuram. Prof. Balram Bhargava, Secretary, Department of Health Research (DHR) and DG, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) virtually inaugurated the NHFB. The biobank will provide insights into heart diseases and heart failure among Indian children and adults, which are different from that seen in the West. The storage facilities include -20, -80-degree mechanical freezers and a liquid nitrogen storage system that can store bio-samples at – 140 degrees perpetually for years. Currently, there are facilities to store nearly 25000 biosamples. The biosamples include the blood, serum, tissue samples obtained during open-heart surgery and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and genomic DNA collected from heart failure patients. The biobank activity is supervised by a Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) with a member from ICMR. The Biobank has already signed an MoU with InStem Bengaluru for collaborative research in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which runs in families with thickening heart muscles.