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Policies and Procedures

  • To ensure the quality of all samples processed and stored in the BSP facility, the BSP maintains a suite of operational and maintenance SOPs as well as a QA/QC policy document. We operate as a UNC-sanctioned recharge core In addition under an approved IRB protocol.
  • Please acknowledge your use of the BSP for sample processing and storage in the following manner:
    The authors would like to acknowledge the University of North Carolina BioSpecimen Processing Facility for sample processing, storage, and sample disbursements (http://bsp.web.unc.edu/)
  • For Funding acknowledgements see the Rigor and Reproducibility page, item 8.
  • Prior to beginning a project in the BSP, a meeting or a phone conversation with the BSP director must be conducted to discuss the needs of your project.
  • Before project work can begin in the BSP, a signed study initiation document must be executed.
  • Any studies taken on by the BSP must have appropriate IRB approval and the BSP needs to retain a copy of the IRB approval letter.
  • Project sample naming/numbering must adhere to the following conditions:
    • Must be anonymized and not contain any PHI
    • Should not include a leading zero or have an E followed by a number

General Description:

As a sanctioned UNC recharge center our charges are based solely on the costs involved in maintaining the facility (maintenance agreements, other direct costs, etc) and our labor and consumable costs. We are non-profit facility. Our charges have been reviewed by the BSP Internal Advisory Board, which is comprised of users from the SOM, SPH, and the SOD.

Pricing Specifics:

  • Please contact us to discuss project specific charges related to DNA/RNA extraction and other samples processing and storage needs. We provide a full-range of services which can be discussed during a preliminary project discussion meeting.
  • Invoicing is performed monthly and payment is expected to be received in 30 days.
  • Prices will be reviewed periodically to adjust for changes in consumable costs. PIs will be notified ahead of time of any pricing changes.
  • Sample storage costs are ongoing and funding for this service must be planned for when the initial project funding has ended. If samples will not be stored in the BSP past the end of the project please be aware that a charge for pulling the samples out of our freezers and transporting these samples safely to your lab will incur a cost. Currently, this cost is $1.50/ sample for study closeout.
  • All regular (non-project close out) sample pulls currently incur a cost of $1.00/sample.
  • All sample pulls from legacy repositories not currently in the BSP Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) incur a $2.00/sample charge.