The goal of the clinical sample management core is to establish and maintain a collection of highly characterized donors/clinical material (e.g. PBMCs, plasma, bone marrow, saliva, etc) that have been collected, harvested and cryopreserved to support the projects proposed in this application. All cell material is cryopreserved using controlled rate cells freezing techniques that assure viable recovery of subsets at 85% or greater of the number of cells originally cryopreserved. Typically, these clinical samples will be acquired as site specific nested studies that are additions to ongoing clinical trials vaccine or other type of studies (e.g., assessing symptomatic or asymptomafic infecfion). The clinical sample management core regulatory and compliance team will assure that all human subject materials and MTA approvals are in place to permit use of the clinical material in a de identified format. The laboratory operates under College of American Pathologists Accreditation (CAP) and is audited annually for GCLP compliance. All laboratory activifies will be performed following GCLP. Cryopreserved materials will be transported from the Duke clinical sample management core to co-investigator laboratones using LN2 dry shippers.

RELEVANCE (See instructions): Influenza is a major public health issue where each year the US experiences at least 30,000 deaths from seasonal presentation of the virus. Pandemic or novel type infections such as the H1N1 virus that appeared in the spring of 2008 can spread rapidly throughout the world with much greater mortality. The work in this clinical core will identify, harvest, and cryopreserve valiable clinical material to be used to support development of a broad spectrum influenza vaccine.