NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – The Chan Soon-Shiong Institute of Molecular Medicine at Windber announced today that its biobank has received CLIA certification from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
According to the institute, the certification follows the accreditation of the Chan Soon-Shiong Biobank at Windber by the College of American Pathologists in 2015. It also ensures that it has the authority to handle and test human samples as the national biobank of the Cancer MoonShot 2020 initiative, which was launched by NantHealth CEO Patrick Soon-Shiong earlier this year and aims to enroll up to 20,000 cancer patients representing 20 different tumor types in randomized clinical trials for immunotherapy combinations by 2020.Â
"CLIA certification not only gives the biobank the authority to handle samples performed on [NantHealth's] GPS Cancer [tumor profiling test], but it also ensures that these samples are kept at the highest quality in order to provide true reflections of the patients' conditions, which is essential for us to win the war on cancer," Soon-Shiong said in a statement.