Summary of preservation studies on fluid biospecimens (serum, plasma, urine, BAL, CSF fluid)
Published on: Thursday 16, December 2010Summary: Fluid biospecimens (plasma, serum, urine, bronchial lavage fluid, saliva, CSF) contain not only cells (the blood cells in plasma and serum as well as exfoliated cells) and sub-cellular components but also proteins, enzymes, lipids, metabolites and peptides, which are utilized as biomarkers. Availability of high quality biospecimens is a requirement for biomarker discovery, and to ensure high specificity and sensitivity of the discovered biomarkers. Currently, millions of fluid biospecimens are stored in hundreds of biorepositories across the nation (in freezer-farms). The success of biomarker research not only depends upon the availability of the tools (proteomic, peptidomic, lipidomic and metabolomic technologies) to extract information from biospecimens, but also on the availability of "high quality" biospecimens. In this summary, the biofluid (serum, plasma, urine, saliva CSF fluid and BALF) are described and the influence of freezing/storage conditions on specific biomarkers described.
