“UK Biobank Leads the Way in Genetics Research to Tackle Chronic Diseases”, 2019-09-11 ():
A £200 million investment from government, industry and charity cements UK Biobank’s reputation as a world-leading health resource to tackle the widest range of common and chronic diseases—including dementia, mental illness, cancer and heart disease. The investment provides for the whole genome sequencing of 450,000 UK Biobank participants. A Vanguard study, funded by the Medical Research Council to sequence the first 50,000 individuals, is already underway.
…The ambitious project is funded with:
- £50 million by the UK Government’s research and innovation agency, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund;
- £50 million from The Wellcome Trust charity;
- £100 million in total from pharmaceutical companies Amgen, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Johnson & Johnson (J&J).
…At the end of May 2020, the consortium of pharmaceutical companies will be provided independently with access for analysis to the first tranche of sequence data (anticipated to be for about 125,000 participants) linked to all of the other data in the UK Biobank resource. After an exclusive access period of 9 months, the whole genome sequence data will be made available to all other approved researchers around the world. A similar exclusive access period will also apply on the completion of the sequencing. The period of exclusive access mirrors the arrangements that UK Biobank had with the exome sequencing project which is being undertaken by Regeneron in the US and other industry partners. The first tranche of exome data on 50,000 participants is now being used in more than 100 research projects worldwide.