Global priorities for large-scale biomarker-based prospective cohorts

Rory Collins; Mary K Balaconis; Søren Brunak; Zhengming Chen; Mary De Silva; J Michael Gaziano; Geoffrey S Ginsburg; Prabhat Jha; Pablo Kuri; Andres Metspalu; Nicola Mulder; Neil Risch

doi:10.1016/j.xgen.2022.100141

Global priorities for large-scale biomarker-based prospective cohorts

Cell Genom. 2022 Jun 8;2(6):100141. doi: 10.1016/j.xgen.2022.100141.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
² Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA.
³ Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
⁴ Clinical Trial Service Unit & Epidemiological Studies Unit and Medical Research Council Population Health Research Unit, Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
⁵ Head of Population Health, Wellcome Trust, London, UK.
⁶ Department of Medicine, Division of Aging, Brigham and Women's Hospital and the VA Boston Healthcare System, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
⁷ All of Us Research Program, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA.
⁸ Dalla Lana School of Public Health, Centre for Global Health Research, St. Michael's Hospital, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
⁹ Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, Monterrey, Mexico.
¹⁰ Estonian Genome Center, Institute of Genomics, Estonian Biobank, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia.
¹¹ Department of Integrative Biomedical Sciences, Computational Biology Division, IDM, CIDRI-Africa WT Centre, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa.
¹² Institute for Human Genetics, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA.

Abstract

The focus of this paper is on strategic approaches for establishing population-based prospective cohorts that collect and store biological samples from very large numbers of participants to help identify the determinants of common health outcomes. In particular, it aims to address key issues related to investigation of genetic, as well as social, environmental, and ancestral, diversity; generation of detailed genetic and other types of assay data; collection of detailed lifestyle and environmental exposure information; follow-up and characterization of incident health outcomes; and overcoming obstacles to data sharing and access (including capacity building). It concludes that there is a need for strategic planning at an international level (rather than the current ad hoc approach) toward the development of a carefully selected set of deeply characterized large-scale prospective cohorts that are readily accessible by researchers around the world.

Publication types

News

Abstract

Publication types

Grants and funding