Supporting Heart & Vascular Biomedical Scientists and Their Research

The mission of University Hospitals Harrington Heart & Vascular Institute Biorepository is to establish our academic medical campus, University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center 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 clinical, research and educational 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
• Leverage biomedical informatics as crucial enabling technologies to implement personalized medicine programs
• Become a national leader in providing the most innovative, cost-effective, personalized medicine diagnosis and treatment by the medical profession, industry, patients, and policy-makers
• 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
• Train the next generation of physician-scientists by providing advanced clinical training in molecular and imaging based technologies and intervention

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 Cleveland Medical Center 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 University Hospitals Harrington Heart & Vascular Institute Biorepository will house a collection of predefined biological samples, including blood and blood derivatives, tissues, and health information donated by patients, for distribution and use in scientific research. Our Biorepository will facilitate interaction across departments, centers, and institutes by bringing together clinicians and researchers with a shared purpose of improving early identification and appropriate treatment of high-risk vascular patients via the emerging opportunity in molecular medicine, imaging and intervention.  Samples are for research purposes only and may not be used for clinical diagnosis.