With a touch of sadness, but enormous gratitude, ASPREE marked the retirement of its Biobuses after a period of long and distinguished service, enabling older Australians in regional and rural areas to contribute to important medical research.
The ASPREE Biobus was a first-of-its-kind mobile laboratory, enabling biospecimen collection, processing and ultra-cold storage away from major metropolitan clinical laboratories. Medical research data collection rarely includes samples from outside large cities due to the difficulty of processing and maintaining the correct storage temperature for time-sensitive specimens that can quickly become unviable.
Lead researcher Associate Professor Robyn Woods, Director of the ASPREE Biobank and the original designer of the Biobus, reports that the ASPREE Biobank aimed to provide a biological reflection of the health of older Australians. “The Biobus has enabled clinical research to be taken into the community, reaching older adults in locations close to their homes. This has resulted in unique data from older adults who are often excluded from vital medical research.” As an added benefit, the program’s scientific focus, which was displayed on each Biobus, raised awareness and interest in medical research.
The ASPREE Biobank has seen blood, saliva and urine samples collected from more than 14,000 initially healthy Australian adults, aged 70 years and older, at intervals over more than 10 years. Samples collected from the same person at different points in time allow researchers to track changes in biomarkers, such as small proteins, which may be associated with disease or maintenance of good health.
“The biomarker information within the samples may show indications of predispositions to diseases, or signal risk factors, and may potentially unearth ways to keep older people healthier, for longer,” Associate Professor Woods said.
Samples were collected in the Biobus over a wide area in south-eastern Australia. The catchment area crossed thousands of kilometres, from Adelaide to the Australian Capital Territory and southern New South Wales, and most of Victoria and Tasmania. And in 2024, the Biobus made its longest journey, all the way up the eastern seaboard to see ASPREE-XT participants in coastal NSW and southern Queensland!
The samples collected by the ASPREE Biobank have already contributed to several studies, with genomics, inflammatory biomarkers, hormones and anaemia biomarkers being examined in older adults.
The processes of sample collection, including the deployment of the ASPREE Biobuses into the community, was recently described in a paper led by A/Prof Woods. For further details, you can read the paper here: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0294743