Biobank sparks hope to heart patients in India

By Shuriah Niazi

NEW DELHI (AA) – India has set up its first heart failure biobank to store tissues and genetic material of patients along with blood samples, body fluids, and all those things that help in medical research to find the remedy for heart diseases.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency, Dr. S. Harikrishnan, a professor at Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology, said the setting up of biobanks has given hope for heart patients.

“Such biobank is important as for heart failure we don’t have real data on prevalence. Estimates say around 15-20 million people have heart failure. Some studies are going on which may give the real figure,” he said.

Coinciding World Heart Day on Wednesday, experts in India say that cardiovascular or heart disease has emerged as a major killer, particularly in urban areas.

According to the Indian Heart Association, 50% of all heart attacks in Indians occur under 50 years of age and 25% of all heart attacks occur under 40 years of age. Further out of total annual deaths nearly a quarter (24.8%) are attributed to heart diseases.

Dr. Harikrishnan said the first National Heart Failure Biobank (NHFB) at the Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology (SCTIMST), inaugurated last month, would be of great help in guiding future therapies and benefit the heart patients.

He said the researchers at the biobank are currently collecting blood samples and tissues from patients.

“During surgery, they have to cut some parts to go through into the heart. For example, when we do bypass surgery, we have to take out an aortic. We collect those samples and preserve them so that they can be used for research,” he added.

The mechanical freezers with temperatures ranging minus 20 to minus 80-degree and a liquid nitrogen storage system store bio-samples at minus 140 degrees for years, said a statement issued by the institute.

“Biobanks are important resources containing collections of high-quality biological samples of human body parts that can be used to understand molecular pathways and to improve the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of heart failure,” said Dr. Ajit Kumar, director at the SCTIMST.

The institute can currently store 25000 biosamples, which among other things also includes genomic DNA collected from heart failure from the patients who had given consent to donate specimens.