Cohorts in Finnish biobanks jointly presented in Fingenious service
Research and patient data available to researchers multiplied in Fingenious® service
Cohort data from Finnish public biobanks are now presented together as part of the Finnish Fingenious service. The new Cohorts application significantly increases the number of biobank samples and datasets presented in the Fingenious service. It enables academic and pharmaceutical researchers to find Finnish cohorts more easily and extensively - which in turn may lead to new types of research. The service presents existing cohorts in a clear and easy-to-use format, and at the same time includes presentation of entirely new biobank cohorts. The Finnish biobank data resources have not been made available on such a large scale before.
Fingenious Availability Services (registration required)
Cohorts presented in the application
The Cohorts application presents a wide range of sample collections and research cohorts available from public biobanks in Finland. The presented cohorts may include i.e.
- traditional research cohorts,
- clinical trial cohorts,
- cohorts based on diagnosis or diagnosis group,
- cohorts based on sample type or specific data in the dataset, or
- collections assembled from the materials of several biobanks, which have been generated, for example, in the context of a previous research project.
In addition to the population-based and disease-specific cohorts from THL Biobank, the service includes a wide range of disease-specific or sample type -specific datasets from hospital biobanks, as well as the Northern Finland Birth Cohorts in Arctic Biobank. Versatile collections enable the compilation of very large research datasets and, for example, a wide variety of case-control settings. Pre-diagnostic samples and follow-up data from national registers can also be used to investigate disease predisposing factors and develop early diagnostics. Health-related information can be linked to biobank samples and data from national health registers, which are very comprehensive in Finland.
The Cohorts application currently describes more than 50 cohorts from Finnish public biobanks. More cohorts are added to the application as they are collected to biobanks or as new cohorts are formed from existing samples and data. The cohorts presented in the application include samples and data from the 1960s to the present day. Many of the cohorts are still being collected and will continue to grow. The cohorts vary widely in size and content, with the number of sample donors ranging from a few hundreds to almost a million. Also, the number and types of samples and data in different cohorts varies.
Focus on ease of use
The new Cohorts application is very easy to use and visually appealing, with each cohort represented by a unique photograph. After logging in to the Fingenious service, cohorts can be browsed through or searched using i.e. keywords, sample type and data categories. Comparable basic information is described for each cohort.
Possibility to explore joint collections from multiple biobanks
The CoCoBi cohort (Connecting Cohorts with Biobanks), which was created for research on healthy aging, is presented in the Cohorts application. It contains samples and data from up to 1.39 million donors from Arctic Biobank, Biobank Borealis of Northern Finland and THL Biobank. The cohort contains harmonized health and lifestyle data and data to assess metabolic health from more than 100,000 Finns. Electronic healthcare data can be integrated into the dataset for approximately 450,000 hospital biobank sample donors. In addition, pregnancy data and serum sample analysis results are available for about 990,000 sample donors. The CoCoBi cohort offers a great opportunity to study longitudinal data collection points and dive deeper into the assessment of health-related factors in the aging population.
(Manuscript “Connecting cohorts of Finnish biobanks creates a research resource for the study of healthy ageing” by Eklund, N. et al. in preparation)
The FinnGen Study Cohort of 320,000 biobank sample donors, which data was mainly generated by the FinnGen biobank project, is also presented in the Cohorts application. The genome data of the sample donors can be linked to national health registries, as well as to samples and data existing in the Finnish Biobanks. More than 120,000 of sample donors in the FinnGen Study Cohort are from THL Biobank and can be linked with research data and additional samples. In addition, many of the sample donors in the cohort can be re-contacted for a new biomedical or clinical study.
More information on the Cohorts application
FINBB: contact (at) finbb.fi
THL Biobank: admin.biobank (at) thl.fi
