Unique Biobank will help foster much needed research

The establishment of a unique Biobank at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Innovation in Biotechnology & Neuroscience (ICIBN) has been highlighted this week in the ‘Lancet Neurology’ considered the ‘Bible’ of clinical neurology.

This bio-repository set up with donations and grants from the National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, America) and the University of Sri Jayewardenepura, with minimal government support, hopes to foster research and education initiatives, linking east and west, for the inherited-diseases community.

The Biobank has DNA and Brain Banks with:

Samples from more than 2,000 patients (stroke – 1,500 patients; Parkinson’s disease – 370 patients; and around 500 healthy controls).

620 samples from patients with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, Spinal Muscular Atrophy, Limb Girdle Muscular Dystrophy, Huntington’s Disease, Spinocerebellar Ataxia and Myotonic Dystrophy along with serum and urine samples from some patients.

A brain bank with: 76 donated brains, with immunohistochemical staining samples for neuropathological markers associated with dementia-related disorders and genotyping data on candidate genes for stroke.

Prof. Ranil de Silva says that the genetic variation of South Asians of Indo-European descent has not been studied in depth. Located at the southernmost tip of south Asia, along the southern migration route, Sri Lanka has long been inhabited by various ethnic groups, thus offering unique insight into the initial peopling of the subcontinent.

“Our bio-repository also includes biospecimens from three villages in southern Sri Lanka, in which there is a high prevalence of Spinocerebellar Ataxia type 1, in a patient population sharing a common ancestry; identical twins with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and a family with Limb-Girdle Muscular Dystrophy type 2A with consanguinity over three generations,” he explains, adding that there are also samples from a Parkinson’s disease cohort that includes 35% of patients having a young onset (<50 years old) and patients with pesticide and herbicide exposure (7%).