onCore UK Licenses LabVantage's Sapphire™ BioBanking Solution to Support its Ambitious Cancer Biosample Resource

onCore UK announced that it has licensed LabVantage's Sapphire BioBanking Solution to support the launch of its ambitious large scale operational cancer biobank.

Founded as a collaboration between the Department of Health (England), the Medical Research Council (MRC), and Cancer Research UK (CRUK), onCore UK will create and run this national biosample resource, collecting and storing tissue and blood samples donated by patients and making them available to cancer researchers on a scale unprecedented in the UK.

To be successful, onCore UK needs to streamline the collection and management of varying types of samples and associated data through its biosample donation network. The biosample bank also needs to provide controlled access for data entry, analysis and reporting, while ensuring compliance with patient privacy/consent restrictions and government regulations.

"After a thorough competitive request for proposal and review process, we decided that LabVantage's Sapphire BioBanking Solution would provide us with the informatics infrastructure to help us achieve our objectives," said Mahendra Navarange, Head of Informatics and IT at onCore UK. "The Sapphire BioBanking Solution provides out-of-the-box biorepository workflow and compliance features that will ensure the intricate tracking and management needed for our biosamples throughout our operations. Also, as a configurable solution, we know we will be able to tailor the technology to our specific needs, both now and in the future," he added.

Sapphire's interface will serve as the portal to the biobank, providing secure, browser access for researchers, clinicians, and third party collaborators. As a flexible, thin-client solution, Sapphire will provide onCore UK with lower total cost of ownership, without the reliance on high cost programming resources, maximizing its return on investment. "We are extremely excited to work with onCore UK in this critical area of medical research and are proud to know that Sapphire will enable researchers to harness onCore's resources to achieve vital results in the fight against cancer," stated Jim Aurelio, President & CEO of LabVantage.

"Sapphire is specifically designed to address the unique challenges of biobanks throughout the globe, whether as part of national initiatives such as onCore's, consortiums of privately funded institutions, or commercial collaborations between pharma and academia," he added.