The José Silveira Foundation (http://www.fjs.org.br/) 
was chosen to host, within the RePORT project, the first high-tech, state of the art biorepository in Brazil´s North and Northeast regions, designed to store clinical samples collected from patients with tuberculosis and their close-contacts from three different parts of Brazil. Rated as one of the best in the world by agencies linked to the National Institutes of Health, the biorepository stores biological samples from participants of Bahia, Amazonas and Rio de Janeiro states. The RePORT-Brazil Biorepository presently occupies an area of 24 m2 divided into 2 rooms located in the Bahia Rehabilitation Institute (IBR), a unit of José Silveira Foundation. The Biorepository has one computer with high speed internet; one printer; one class II B2 cabinet; nine -80 ºC freezers (with a capacity of 290,000 2 mL specimen samples, including 12,100 10mL PAXgene tubes); 2 nitrogen tanks (10,000 and 4,000 2mL samples); 2 air-conditioners to maintain the store temperature at 22ºC and one generator 25kva for emergency electric source failure. The computer is linked to the freezers, which monitor temperature 24/7 and send alarms to alert people of temperature variations. Recently, a second emergency CO2 backup system is in place. All specimens are tracked through FreezerPRO, a web-based secure software providing access to sample information from anywhere.
Currently, we have over 275,000 specimens stored in the biorepository, linked to clinical, epidemiological and laboratory data in the REDCap-RePORT-Brazil database. The Jose Silveira Foundation is responsible for maintaining the biorepository´s equipment and facilities.
The biorepository team is responsible for receiving and managing all clinical samples from the RePORT-Brazil centers and separating samples for carrying out studies. Strict quality control is performed in storage with temperature control and all the necessary requirements to guarantee the quality of the stored samples.
Biorepository Team:
Coordinator: André Ramos
Assistant: Pedro Brito
Research Center Coordinator: Eduardo M. Netto
General Coordinator of RePORT-Bahia and Brazil: Bruno Andrade
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- Representatives of the Brazilian Ministry of Health and Fundação José Silveira during a visit to the Biorepository in 2017
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- Andre Ramos and Pedro Brito
