"Blood storage lab holds clues for disease prevention" by Deborah Kotz |
Globe Staff, August 22, 2012
Deep beneath
Commonwealth Avenue rests a freezer farm stocked with more than 2
million frozen vials of human blood. The samples, sitting under a
convenience store and butting up against tunnels beneath the T’s Green
Line, are chilled to 155 degrees below zero Fahrenheit as they reside
in giant metal vats pumped full of liquid nitrogen.
The blood came from some 150,000 volunteers who participated in
research studies conducted by Brigham and Women’s Hospital during the
past two decades and serves as a trove for scientists endeavoring to
answer some of the most vexing questions in medicine.
Researchers, for example, can dip into the blood samples repeatedly
to analyze the DNA of study participants who developed cancer or heart
disease years after the initial study ended. Their goal is to find new
ways to prevent chronic illness and to determine which patients get the
biggest benefits from a particular drug, potentially paving the way to
tailor medical treatments to individual patients.
One of the more pressing items on their agenda: to provide proof that
reducing artery-damaging inflammation prevents heart attacks and
strokes. To help answer that question, thousands of new blood samples
will soon join those already in the freezer farm....
--more--"
Related: Police seek witness in South End shooting
That is some of the blood on Boston's streets.
