San Antonio Business Journal: UT Health San Antonio to get millions for new biobank

The J.M.R. Barker Foundation is contributing $2.5 million to UT Health San Antonio to help develop a centralized biobank that backers hope will accelerate biomedical research and expand the institution’s role in fighting cancer and heart disease, as well as Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.

The biobank is expected to give UT Health San Antonio critical research platforms and the ability to provide better diagnoses and treatment. It will be part of a larger UT System effort that includes six institutions across the state working with a federal biobank infrastructure on shared resources and best practices, collecting bio-specimens linked with medical records of each donor.

UT Health San Antonio President Dr. William Henrich said the centralized biobank will facilitate increased focus on collecting, processing and analyzing specimens from patients affected by diseases that disproportionately impact South Texas’ population.

“In the United States, the majority of clinical trials and medical research has been conducted on non-Hispanic Caucasians, and evidence is showing that many discoveries and resulting treatments may not be relevant to other populations,” Henrich said. “San Antonio’s patient base is 63 percent Hispanic — a population that is significantly underrepresented nationally in biomedical research and clinical trials.”

Plans for the biobank include a repository specifically for brain specimens, said Dr. Sudha Seshadri, director of UT Health San Antonio’s Glenn Biggs Institute for Alzheimer’s and Neurodegenerative Diseases.

“This brain bank will provide essential resources for our neuroscience researchers and faculty at the Biggs Institute as they seek to understand how the brain functions,” Seshadri said. “It also will create additional avenues for collaborative research on a national level in Alzheimer’s and neurodegenerative diseases.”