Associated organisationsUniversity of Cape Town · The University of Western AustraliaEurope PMC affiliations are not treated as award recipients or mapped locations.
Funding£1.5M
PeriodJun 2021 — May 2026
In plain English
AI plain-English summary
A South African biorepository will consolidate over 527,000 biological samples and linked health data from three long-running child health studies into a single, accessible facility. The problem is that African children are severely underrepresented in biomedical research, yet they face the highest burdens of infectious diseases like tuberculosis and HIV, alongside rising rates of non-communicable conditions such as asthma and heart disease. Without large, well-characterised sample collections from African populations, researchers cannot study how early-life infections, genetics, and environment interact to shape lifelong health. This gap means treatments and prevention strategies are often based on data from other continents. If successful, this facility will grow to hold more than 732,000 samples, linking them to demographic, clinical, genetic, and environmental data through a web interface. Researchers worldwide will be able to request samples or datasets, enabling cross-disciplinary studies on how childhood infections influence later chronic disease. The resource provides African-specific data that could eventually inform locally relevant screening programmes, vaccine strategies, and clinical guidelines—improving child health outcomes across the continent.
View original technical description
We propose to create an African biorepository and linked comprehensive database to support cross-disciplinary research that advances child health. The biorepository will consolidate >527,000 samples and data from three ongoing large population-based studies: (i) Drakenstein Child Health Study, a birth cohort with samples from parents, children and the environment collected antenatally through childhood; (ii) paediatric tuberculosis studies with samples longitudinally collected over 15 years; and (iii) Cape Town Adolescent Antiretroviral Cohort, a study of HIV-infected adolescents on antiretroviral-therapy and uninfected controls investigating development and determinants of chronic disease. Ongoing prospective data and sample collection for the next 5 years, in these and other child health studies, will substantially grow this facility (>732,000 samples). The facility will support several Wellcome Trust grantees and serve as a platform for cross-disciplinary research, linking metadata and samples to different databases (demographic, clinical, radiological, microbiological, genetic, transcriptomic, environmental, immunological, psychosocial). A key focus is on infectious exposures and development of non-communicable diseases, key priorities in African health. A web interface will be created for investigators to access samples or datasets. This resource will be invaluable for current and future collaborative research to advance child health and to provide African-specific data and samples.
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