The Biosample Research Center (formerly the Biosample Center) was established on April 1, 2013. The Center was created with the goal of streamlining the preparation and storage of blood and urine biosamples collected with the consent of RERF study participants and providing the samples to users, as well as consolidating the biosample databases. Since 1969, RERF has gained consent from about 25,000 participants in the Adult Health Study of atomic bomb survivors and about 12,000 participants in the Clinical Study of the F1 Offspring of A-bomb Survivors, for the collection of their blood and urine biosamples to aid future studies. As of the end of October 2018, the Center has stored about 1.8 million tubes of biosamples (750,000 tubes of serum, 370,000 of plasma, 500,000 of blood cells, and 210,000 of urine) donated by more than 30,000 health examination participants. Among these blood and urine samples, 370,000 tubes are stored in the new robotic biorepository system (-80 ℃) installed in the Hiroshima Laboratory in 2015, and 1.23 million tubes are stored in 83 conventional deep freezers (-80 ℃) (51 freezers in Hiroshima and 32 in Nagasaki). Among the blood cells mentioned above, 230,000 tubes of peripheral blood mononuclear cells are stored in a living state in 39 liquid nitrogen tanks (-150– -196 ℃) (32 tanks in Hiroshima and seven in Nagasaki). Moreover, plans are being made to have the Biosample Research Center manage other valuable RERF specimens in the future, such as pathology and tooth samples. In order to allow the RERF biosample information to be shared with researchers in Japan and around the world, there are also plans to provide a system enabling individual researchers to quickly and easily search for and extract biosamples they need for research by building a database that centralizes and comprehensively manages the biosample information.

Research scientists and their research interests

Osamu Tanabe, MD, PhD, Director, Biosample Research Center

Molecular Biology
Biochemistry
Hematology