In news The first National Heart Failure Biobank (NHFB) in the country was inaugurated at the Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology (SCTIMST), Kerala.
About the Bio-bank
Biobanks are important resources containing collections of high-quality biological samples of human body parts that can be used to understand molecular pathways and to improve the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of heart failure.
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.
With heart failure emerging as a major health problem in India, ICMR had initiated the National Centre for Advanced Research and Excellence in Heart Failure (CARE-HF) at SCTIMST for scaling up research in the field.
The Heart Failure Biobank is one of the major components of the project, with a fund allocation of 85 Lakhs for developing state-of-the-art storage facilities.
Benefits
This would greatly help in guiding future therapies and technologies and would benefit the heart failure patients significantly,
The biobank will provide insights into heart diseases and heart failure among Indian children and adults, which are very different from that seen in the West.
The facility will be useful for the research and treatment of post-covid heart failure.
Through the NHFB, researchers can get access to well-annotated biological specimens linked to clinical data while maintaining appropriate standards of quality and security.
NHFB will facilitate research both in India and abroad, helping clinicians and scientists to work together to understand and find solutions to heart failure-related morbidity and mortality.
