UK launches ambitious tissue/data bank project (original) (raw)

Nature Biotechnology volume 20, page 529 (2002) Cite this article

Starting in April next year, the study will recruit half a million UK citizens from 45 to 69 years of age. Plasma and DNA samples will be taken from all subjects, along with details of their exposure to risk-related factors such as dietary factors, alcohol, exercise, pollution, smoking, and even mobile-phone use. The study will then track the subjects' subsequent encounters with the National Health Service (NHS), including all medications prescribed and diseases diagnosed, throughout their lives. Researchers hope this will cast light on the causes of cardiovascular, metabolic, musculoskeletal, and neuropsychiatric conditions and cancer. The initial blood samples will define the subjects' initial states of health as well as providing a means of assessing biochemical markers of exposure later on. The 45–69 age group was chosen so that many disease events are likely to occur during the course of the study, providing a continuing stream of data for the next 30 years.

“Linking these [environmental and lifestyle factors and measures of blood pressure and biochemicals] to genetic information will provide a wealth of new information that will not be available elsewhere,” says Alan Doyle, the project's scientific program manager at the Wellcome Trust.

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  1. London
    Peter Mitchell

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Mitchell, P. UK launches ambitious tissue/data bank project.Nat Biotechnol 20, 529 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt0602-529

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