Times Are Changing: 35 Years of Human Biospecimen Procurements for the National Disease Research Interchange.

Abstract

The fields of basic biological and biomedical research have greatly benefitted from studies using human biospecimens. The National Disease Research Interchange (NDRI) joined the pursuit of scientific advancement over thirty-five years ago with the exclusive mission of supporting the acceleration of diabetes research. In the first few years of its existence, NDRI’s primary activity was providing diabetes researchers with non-transplantable human pancreas biospecimens. In doing so, NDRI played a pivotal role in supporting the development of the experimental methods for isolating human pancreatic islet cells for scientific analysis. This pioneering work is still highly relevant today; diabetes researchers currently use isolated pancreatic islet cells for a wide range of studies such as the development of transplantation therapies and regeneration studies.