World’s largest proteomics study launched by UK Biobank
UK Biobank has today announced the launch of the world’s most comprehensive study of the proteins circulating in our bodies, which will transform the study of diseases and their treatments. This unparalleled project aspires to measure up to 5,400 proteins in each of 600,000 samples, including those taken from half a million UK Biobank participants and 100,000 second samples taken from these volunteers up to 15 years later. This will allow researchers to explore a first-of-its-kind database, detailing how changes to an individual’s protein levels over mid-to-late life influence disease. The study will begin by analysing the first 300,000 samples, which will include initial samples from 250,000 UK Biobank volunteers and 50,000 second samples taken at follow-up assessments.
Measuring the abundance of thousands of proteins circulating in the blood enables researchers to investigate their potential role in many types of diseases that occur during mid-to-late life. This emerging research field – known as population proteomics – has demonstrated huge potential for diagnostics and therapeutics.
In October 2023, a pilot project released data on nearly 3,000 circulating proteins from 54,000 UK Biobank participants. The pilot was already the world’s largest study of its kind and led to research identifying over 14,000 links between common genetic variants and altered protein levels, over 80% of which were previously unknown.
The research, published in Nature1, has already been cited over 400 times, laying the foundations for scientists to better understand how and why diseases develop. So far, studies using the data have led to advances in disease prediction2,3 and developing future targeted treatments for breast cancer4, cardiovascular disease5, Parkinson’s disease6, and other brain illnesses7.
This new study, which aims to increase this unique dataset by ten-fold, is being funded by a consortium of 14 leading biopharmaceutical companies, known as the UK Biobank Pharma Proteomics Project.
