Great North Neonatal Biobank 2021

• Research type

  Research Tissue Bank

• IRAS ID

  293413

• Research summary

  Great North Neonatal Biobank

• REC name

  North East - Newcastle & North Tyneside 1 Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  21/NE/0024

• Date of REC Opinion

  16 Feb 2021

• REC opinion

  Favourable Opinion

• Data collection arrangements

  We are actively researching to help us make progress in the care of preterm and sick newborn babies and many of our research projects use body fluids like stool, urine, blood or breast milk to help us learn more about health and illness in babies.
  Because the babies are so small we have developed a system to salvage left over blood and other samples that is well established but not accessible to other researchers, and not 'protected' for future research. The Great North Neonatal biobank allows storage and access to other researchers and forms a separate collection within the existing Newcastle Biomedicine Biobank. The samples that we use are collected without any additional handling or sampling from the baby: either from a nappy (stool, urine), from a routine suction/swab (saliva/secretions), or left over after necessary tests have been done (blood), or feeds are complete (breast milk from the end of syringes etc), or taken as part of a necessary operation (tissue, usually bowel). We never take ‘extra’ amounts of blood/tissue for banking, simply store any already taken and ‘left over’ after clinical testing. Formal consent is taken and data stored securely in link-anonymised fashion.
  We also have some samples from healthy babies to act as 'controls' for the sick and preterm babies. This means we can better understand findngs in the ill babies.

• Research programme

  Newcastle Neonatal Service cares for newborn babies with complex health needs and increased risks of problems that relate to growth and bowel function, immunological and metabolic function both during their stay in the neonatal unit and affect outcomes in later life. Although survival of very preterm or sick babies has improved there remain significant areas that we still do not understand well, and some problems have actually increased as survival has improved (infection, necrotising enterocolitis (NEC), developmental delay, autistic spectrum disorders). The current focus of the Newcastle Neonatal Service is research into growth, bowel health and a specific problem called NEC, infection and stool flora, overall cell metabolism and immune function. This research programme has published in scientific journals, and includes National and International collaborations. The Great North Neonatal biobank supports work in Newcastle Hospital and Universty, and with our collaborators including analysing gut bacteria, function, metabolism and how this affects gut and general health, how the immune system responds, and what gut tisssue is like in health and disease. We also use DNA to look at aspects of genetic variation, including both normal or inherited variations, as well as disease specific or acquired mutation. The biobank is an invaluable resource to neonatal research.

• Storage license

  12534

• RTBTitle

  Great North Neonatal Biobank

• Establishment organisation

  Newcastle University

• Establishment organisation address

  Framlington Place

  Newcastle upon Tyne

  NE7 1RU