Biorepository project initiated early in pandemic to streamline coronavirus research efforts
In the weeks before the St. Louis region saw its first patients with COVID-19, physician-scientists at Washington University School of Medicine began planning and preparing how best to collect blood and other biological samples from such patients so specimens could be quickly disseminated to researchers seeking strategies to treat, prevent and contain the novel coronavirus.
With financial support from The Foundation for Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University’s Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences (ICTS), as well as input from the Community Advisory Board of Washington University’s Institute for Public Health and ICTS, the School of Medicine created a repository to store and manage specimens collected from adult and pediatric patients who have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 — the virus that causes COVID-19. The sample-collection efforts are led by Philip Mudd, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of emergency medicine, and Jane O’Halloran, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of medicine…