Cell and DNA repository.

From the outside, it looks like any typical academic building on the Rutgers University campus. However, inside RUCDR (formerly Rutgers University Cell and DNA Repository), millions of samples of human cells and DNA lie in hundreds of vats—in conditions ranging from room temperature to the temperature of liquid nitrogen depending on the sample. Some are swabs from the cheeks of alcoholics, part of a massive study on the genetic causes of alcoholism funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Some are blood samples from autistic children and their families who have enrolled in the Simons Simplex Collection, a study spearheaded by the Simons Foundation. In still other freezers are brains from deceased Alzheimer’s patients, tumor samples from biopsies of cancer patients, and urine and feces samples that researchers are using to study the collection of bacteria that inhabit the human body. RUCDR acts as the federal genetic repository, storing biological samples from five of the institutes that make up the National Institutes of Health. Doctors and researchers from other universities and hospitals around the country ship samples to Rutgers to be stored for future research studies. “Having a single centralized repository not only saves money,” says Andrew Brooks, the chief operating officer of RUCDR, “but it allows reproducibility and reliability in large genetic studies.” Even in a pinch, the facility always has extra room—in October 2012, when New York City’s Bellevue Hospital flooded after Hurricane Sandy, 1.5 million biologic and genetic samples of patients were driven to RUCDR for temporary storage. However, with all those samples, how does RUCDR keep track of which is which? “Every sample is in its own barcoded tube,” explains Brooks. “And we’ve created technologies that can molecularly fingerprint samples as well, so if there is a tube error, we can still match up the contents to the correct record.” An automated system manages most of the samples at RUCDR—robotic arms move tubes where they are needed and machines remove tiny portions of the samples to amplify—but samples that are actively being studied can also be handled manually. Originally, RUCDR only stored biologic samples and shipped them to researchers who needed them, but now genetic sequencing happens at the facility as well—it is part of the push to make every step of a study more reproducible. “It’s more cost effective to not transfer samples all around the globe,” says Brooks. “It decreases the time to discovery by weeks or even months.” A technician removes cryopreserved cells from a deep freeze at the Rutger’s Cell and DNA Repository. Image courtesy of Jay A. Tischfield, founder and Chief Executive Officer of RUCDR, Piscataway, NJ.