McGill University Purchases GenVault's Personal Archive System to Manage Rare Canc...( CARLSBAD Calif. Oct. 17 /- GenVau...)

CARLSBAD, Calif., Oct. 17 /PRNewswire/ -- GenVault announced today that the Henry C. Witelson Ocular Pathology Laboratory at the McGill University Health Centre has purchased a Personal Archive biosample management system. The laboratory is located in Montreal, Quebec.

GenVault technology will be a critical component of the Laboratory's research in determining the mechanisms underlying eye cancers such as uveal melanoma and retinoblastoma and for developing new approaches for treatment. These eye cancers are particularly devastating with a high percentage of patients developing metastatic cancers. The Personal Archive biosample management system will be utilized as the primary repository to securely store these rare and precious patient samples to facilitate research. It will also be used as a central bank to make these samples available to collaborators also dedicated to developing treatment for these devastating diseases. Specifically the system will be used to collect patient samples in Latin America and transport them back to the laboratory for analysis, replacing expensive dry ice shipments which leave samples vulnerable to degradation.

"We don't do research as an intellectual exercise. We do research because there is a patient at the end of the day. We believe the GenVault system will help us to improve the diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of patients with ocular diseases particularly ocular tumors by improving our ability to store clinical and experimental samples." said Dr. Miguel N. Burnier, Jr. MD, PhD, PI of Lab.

GenVault's Personal Archive is a laboratory sized storage module for room temperature sample management. The system can accommodate up to 403,200 sample aliquots or the equivalent of 10 freezers in the same physical space as a single freezer and requires 1/10th of the energy of a freezer. This is all possible by the incorporation of the GenPlate, a multiwell plate incorporating FTA(R) paper enabling DNA samples to be st
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