Archive of Samples for Long-term Preservation of RNA and Other Nucleic Acids

Our pilot study demonstrates that a novel proprietary biological dry powder/pellet (BDP) is useful for long-term preservation of nucleic acids in blood and bone marrow at room temperature (15"22 degree C). The concept of the BDP approach includes to dissolve the interested biological samples into nucleic acid protecting reagents and then to lyophilize mixture into BDP for preservation of nucleic acids at room temperature or 4 degree C for many years. To make BDP useful, we have also developed specific methods for efficient purification of high quality and quantity of RNA from BDP derived from small amount samples, for example, as low as 500 microliters of peripheral blood or 200 microliters of bone marrow. To our knowledge, BDP represents a paradigm shift in archiving biological samples for preservation of RNA and DNA at room temperature for years potentially as long as a human life span. We now apply for the DoD SBIR Phase I support to optimize the BDP methods, specifically, i) to determine preferable tissue for nucleic acid archiving, ii) to investigate sample collection protocol, processing, of the selected tissue, and iii) to initially define key potential aspects of storage conditions for preservation of nucleic acids.