The Infectious Diseases BioBank (IDB) is embedded within the Department of Infectious Diseases at the Guy’s Campus of King’s College London. Its aim is to make medical research easier, more efficient and faster to perform. The IDB collects valuable clinical samples from patients with infections who are attending our partner NHS-Trust clinics and is funded by the Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity and by the NHS via the comprehensive Biomedical Research Centre.
Our core collections include blood samples from patients infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis B (HBV) & hepatitis C (HCV) viruses or methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Blood samples are separated so that patients’ DNA, plasmas (cell-free blood) and lymphocytes (white blood cells) can be frozen into a comprehensive library.
Medical researchers can access complete sets of samples to answer important clinical questions, if their research project is approved by the IDB’s Management Committee. For this reason we are actively recruiting ‘medically interesting’ patients who are infected with HIV, for example: those who remain well – despite being infected for many years; others who are exposed to HIV but remain uninfected; others who develop AIDS very quickly; and, those who are in the process of sero-converting.