OpenSpecimen and COVID19 Research

PUNE, India - Jan. 18, 2021 - PRLog -- "According to Darwin's Origin of Species, it is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intellectual; but the one most adaptable to change." – Leon C. Megginson

The pandemic has forced us, humans, social creatures in happier days, to adapt to physical distancing. This has made us adjust to a weird environment where demand is unpredictable, and the supply is slammed.
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Even as the world was coming to terms with the 2008 global financial crisis, Rahm Emanuel—Barack Obama's chief of staff at the time—said something that still holds true.

"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."

That is a good segway to talk about many of our old and new clients working on COVID studies and using OpenSpecimen to manage the specimens.

Columbia University Biobank
Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, in partnership with New York-Presbyterian Hospital, has established a COVID-19 Biobank as a centralized resource for researchers at Columbia University and elsewhere.

University of California Davis
The Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Biorepository is managing residual clinical specimens obtained from COVID-19 patients. Data will be banked under a School of Medicine sponsored institutional review board (IRB) approved protocol and be accessible for investigators requesting access.

University of Western Australia
WA COVID-19 Research Collaboration efforts aim to study and minimize the health and other consequences of COVID-19 and provide the infrastructure required to enable these efforts. They have established distinct streams of work that allow researchers from across WA to contribute to this endeavor, whether through capturing data and relevant specimens, supporting existing clinical trials, or initiating new clinical trials and studies to help mitigate the virus's effects.

University of Melbourne
The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity – a joint venture between the University of Melbourne and The Royal Melbourne Hospital – has been awarded AU$3.2 million (US$2.15 million) by the Jack Ma Foundation to expedite the creation of a vaccine against coronavirus (COVID-19).

Weill Cornell Medical Center (New York)
Weill Cornell Medicine recognizes the gravity of the pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2. WCM response will help define how our society changes for the better when the pandemic is over. Towards this, WCMC Biorepository has started collecting COVID biospecimens and using OpenSpecimen to manage the data.

Cambridge University (London)
Many labs in the Haematology department in CU are doing COVID related research. Krishagni has been providing priority support to ensure that these studies' configuration and data collection are smooth and are done promptly.

Krishagni is also in advanced talks with a couple of academic centers to accelerate their research using OpenSpecimen.

Ref: https://www.openspecimen.org/covid19/