Sample Collection From Healthy Volunteers for Assay Optimization

Overview

Background: The Laboratory of Immune System Biology (LISB) works with other labs at the National Institutes of Health. They study how parts of living things come together to make a whole. LISB designs and improves research tests on human samples like blood and cells. In order to do its work, LISB needs to have a lot of these samples available. Objective: To collect biological specimens to use for designing and improving research tests. Specimens include blood, stool, saliva, and skin/mucosal swabs. Eligibility: Healthy people ages 3-80 Design: Participants will be screened with an interview about their general health and their medical history. They will have a physical exam and blood tests. If the results of the screening are normal, participants will be asked to give one or more of these samples: Blood will be drawn from an arm vein with a needle and syringe. Mucus and skin will be collected by rubbing the area with a cotton swab. The areas may include the top of the tongue, inside the cheek, nostrils, behind the ear, elbow pit, or vagina. Participants will spit into a tube to collect saliva. Participants will pass stool into a plastic container that fits in the toilet under the seat. They will get sampling kits and instructions. Over the next 5 years, if more samples are needed, participants will be contacted to set up another visit to the NIH. These visits will each take about 1 hour. About every 2 years, when participants come to NIH for a visit, extra blood will be collected. It will be tested for HIV and hepatitis B and C.

The Laboratory of Immune System Biology plays a major role in fostering the growth of systems biology efforts across the National Institutes of Health, in large measure through its development of new tools for high-throughput data generation and complex systems modeling. The lab s experimental component requires ongoing assay development and optimization, which depend on the availability of human biological samples for testing. The primary purpose of this protocol is to obtain biological specimens from healthy volunteers to support the lab s development and optimization of scientific assays, and to use as control samples for research tests in other studies. The secondary objective of this study is to track immunologic changes over time using the assays developed and optimized in this study.