Laboratory Corporation of America and Duke University reached a deal Tuesday regarding operation of a high-tech storage facility near the N.C. Research Campus and management of up to 10 million human biological samples.
Burlington-based LabCorp and Duke are collaborating on the 40,000-square-foot biorepository at U.S. Highway 29 and Chipola Road, which is under construction by campus developer Castle & Cooke North Carolina and should open later this year.
The biorepository will store samples for academic centers, research organizations, health care providers and biotechnology companies.
“The biorepository is an important addition to LabCorp’s biomarker-development capabilities and our service offerings for our commercial clients,” said David. King, chief executive officer of LabCorp, in a statement. “The biorepository is also an important addition to our longstanding relationship with Duke University and a new initiative for LabCorp at NCRC. The combined capabilities of our organizations through the Biorepository will further our leadership in personalized medicine and will lead to new discoveries and new diagnostic tests that will benefit patient care.”
Duke will use the facility to house samples collected from 50,000 Cabarrus County and Kannapolis residents who enroll in the university’s long-term medical research study.
“The future of health care is in personalized, and genomic medicine which will require an ability to store and analyze large quantities of tissue and blood samples,” said Victor Dzau, chancellor for Health Affairs and CEO, Duke University Health System. “By identifying external collaborators whose capabilities dovetail with our research objectives, we can achieve a synergy in our goal to improve human health. The LabCorp Biorepository provides a solution for one of the essential requirements for driving science that will impact global health.”
For more details, see the report.
