The Indiana CTSI’s Biospecimen Management Core coordinates the safe transfer and storage of 96,000 samples for new researcher at IU School of Medicine
When William Hagopian, MD, PhD, accepted a position with the Herman B Wells Center for Pediatric Research at Indiana University School of Medicine, he faced an enormous task. He needed to transport 25 years of samples critical to his work on type 1 diabetes from Seattle to Indianapolis, and securely store them while he set up his new lab.
That’s where the Indiana CTSI’s Biospecimen Management Core stepped in.
The Biospecimen Management Core is comprised of two groups, the Clinical and Translational Support Laboratory (CTSL) and the Specimen Storage Facility (SSF). Their goal is to provide cost-effective processing and storage services to researchers connected to the Indiana CTSI and its partner organizations.
Rob Orr, director of the SSF and operations manager for the CTSL, said the Biospecimen Management Core is one of very few facilities with the capability and resources to accomplish something on this scale.
“We were able to ‘borrow’ unused space in a couple freezers here in the Children’s Clinical Research Center to accommodate the need,” Orr Said.
Hagopian, now a research professor of pediatrics at IU School of Medicine, formerly served as a clinical professor at the Pacific Northwest Diabetes Research Institute at the University of Washington. During his time at UW, he published more than a dozen papers, focusing his work on topics related to the pathogenesis and treatment of type 1 diabetes.
He also took part in the TEDDY Study, an international collaboration of six laboratories worldwide funded in part by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), aimed at identifying environmental triggers of type 1 diabetes in children. The study followed more than 8000 children with a high genetic risk from birth to age 15 in hopes of pinpointing factors that cause the immune system to attack the pancreas and ultimately lead to the development of the disease. Unique in its scale and scope, the study has so far uncovered a wide range of factors that influence the immune response and has also led to success in predicting and preventing diabetic ketoacidosis in these children.
While the clinical portion of the study wrapped up in 2025, the data analysis is expected to continue for another ten years.
So, when Hagopian was ready to transfer his life’s work to Indianapolis, the team at the Biospecimen Management Core helped to coordinate the safe storage of the samples during the six weeks it took for the researcher’s four freezers to cross the country safely.
The team received the first of several shipments and began the process of unboxing and storing the samples on March 5, 2026.
By the time all three of the scheduled shipments were received, Orr’s team had 30 large boxes containing 1250 standard cryobox equivalents each. This works out to be approximately 96,000 research biosamples.
“You folks were very kind, very accommodating, and hugely helpful every step of the way,” said Hagopian in an email to the team after retrieving his samples. “It feels wonderful to have such able support at IU for translational clinical research. You guys are really a class act.”
