The mission of the Harrington Heart and Vascular Institute (HHVI) Biorepository is to establish University Hospitals (UH) as a national and international leader in personalized high-risk vascular care and to enable biomedical scientists to address research questions involving the diagnosis and treatment of these disorders through the coalescence of high resolution molecular diagnostics with traditional imaging and clinical data. The goals of this effort are:
- To organize and cultivate the integration of personalized information into research and eventually clinical care of the high-risk vascular patient. (Clinical)
- To leverage biomedical informatics as crucial enabling technologies to implement personalized medicine programs. (Clinical)
- To be a national leader in providing the most innovative, cost-effective, personalized medicine diagnosis (molecular and imaging based) and treatment by the medical profession, industry, patients, and policy-makers. (Clinical)
- To facilitate the collaboration of interdisciplinary translational research teams drawn from the medical school, the cancer center, bioinformatics, pharmacy, material sciences and engineering focused on personalized medicine approaches for atherosclerosis. (Research)
- To train the next generation of physicians/scientists by providing advanced clinical training in molecular and imaging based technologies and intervention. (Education)
Modern care of the patient with cardiovascular disease is quickly extending to approaches that enable identification of personal risk/prognosis, choice of treatment and response to therapy. Currently, expertise in various technologies (genomic, transcriptomic proteomic, imaging, etc.) is pursued by distinct departmental silos. UH has existing strength, solid foundations, funding, and singularly impressive infrastructure in these areas.
However, there is no effort to collect patient samples that would enable investigation of personalized approaches for high risk cardiovascular disease. The HHVI Biorepository will house a collection of predefined biological samples (including blood and blood derivatives, tissues, and health information donated by patients) for use in scientific research. It is expected to facilitate interaction across departments, centers, and institutes, bringing together clinicians and researchers with a shared purpose of improving early identification and appropriate treatment of high-risk vascular patient via the emerging opportunity in molecular medicine, imaging and intervention.