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
Affiliations
Rory Collins
Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK; Corresponding author
Mary K. Balaconis
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA
Søren Brunak
Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
Zhengming Chen
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
Mary De Silva
Head of Population Health, Wellcome Trust, London, UK
J. Michael Gaziano
Department of Medicine, Division of Aging, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the VA Boston Healthcare System, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
Geoffrey S. Ginsburg
All of Us Research Program, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA
Prabhat Jha
Dalla Lana School of Public Health, Centre for Global Health Research, St. Michael’s Hospital, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
Pablo Kuri
Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, Monterrey, Mexico
Andres Metspalu
Estonian Genome Center, Institute of Genomics, Estonian Biobank, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia
Nicola Mulder
Department of Integrative Biomedical Sciences, Computational Biology Division, IDM, CIDRI-Africa WT Centre, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
Neil Risch
Institute for Human Genetics, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA
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.
