Sapien is a multi-disease, geographically diverse biobank based in India. It is backed by Apollo Hospitals, the largest network of 74 high quality hospitals covering India. The biorepository has more than 300,000 patients’ samples and associated medical data making it one of the top 10 biobanks in the world. Asian data comprises less than 5% of the global genomic data, a gap Sapien is uniquely poised to address.
Multiple sample formats including FFPE blocks, flash frozen tissues, blood and its derivatives such as plasma and live tumor cells are available, all ethically procured, in compliance with Indian and global biobanking norms. Sapien has a well-defined governance structure and institutional ethics committee overseeing its activities.
Several products and services relevant to pharma, diagnostic R&D, established from patient samples and data, are available. These include a) Oncobloc, a systematic collection of cancer FFPE blocks with structured demographic and diagnostic data, b) OncoPrime, a panel of primary cells derived from breast and brain cancer patient tissues, grown as 2D monolayer and as 3D spheroids to test drug candidates and formulations, c) OncoData, including curated RWE datasets of thousands of cancer cases comprising breast (>18,000 cases), lung (>5,000 cases), colorectal (>5000 cases), oral (>2,000 cases), renal (>1200 cases), gliomas (>1000 cases), Genomic data with NGS partners such as ThermoFisher, and whole slide images of 1000+ breast and other cancers to enable the development of predictive algorithms using ML, AI and digital pathology, d) TruCell, a panel of human cells derived from many types of normal or disease samples such as PBMCs, Dendritic cells, fibroblasts, e) TruScreen, custom cell, molecular, histopathological assays to validate new drugs, targets, biomarkers, f) TruSkin, normal human skin from cosmetic surgeries for testing dermal formulations and drugs for their efficacy and skin toxicity.