Company grants access to longitudinal serum biobank for use in cardiovascular disease research
Abcodia, a biosciences company based in London (UK), has announced an initiative to license access to serum samples from its unique longitudinal serum biobank for use in validating biomarkers for cardiovascular disease.
Among non-communicable diseases in the developed world, cardiovascular disease is a major cause of adult mortality and is rapidly increasing in incidence across emerging economies. However, it is anticipated that a large proportion of heart attacks and strokes could be prevented through early detection and intervention.
Abcodia, which operates in conjunction with University College London (London, UK) and in partnership with diagnostic, pharmaceutical and technology companies, anticipates that the longitudinal samples from a population-sized cohort of individuals may provide a promising lead in the discovery of new biomarkers, as well as giving an insight into cardiovascular disease progression.
The samples were donated by over 200,000 women, 50,000 of whom provided annual samples over 10 years as part of the UK Collaborative Trial in Ovarian Cancer. Overall, the bank now holds over 5 million samples, of which around 3.5 million are longitudinal.
A significant pool of healthy controls allows for detailed case-control matching on age, smoking, alcohol and/or other demographic factors. Controls can easily be matched to include or exclude confounding diseases with the knowledge that all of the samples have been collected to a standard protocol that minimizes variability.
According to a press release from Abcodia, the company intends to provide its partners with access to a large cohort of pre- and post-diagnosis cases across the full spectrum of cardiovascular diseases, including atherosclerosis, angina, heart failure, myocardial infarction and cerebrovascular disease, among others. In addition, all samples will be annotated with a range of demographic data for each volunteer and relevant clinical data may be obtained according to Abcodia’s partners’ requirements.
Abcodia envisage that, by enabling access to their longitudinal serum biobank, it will promote the early detection and intervention of cardiovascular disease, and improve clinical trials for potential therapeutics.
