My Healthy Maryland biobank will use health data from 250,000 state volunteers to help prevent, treat diseases – The Mahathian Post

Researchers from the University of Maryland School of Medicine have begun collecting comprehensive health information from 250,000 volunteers across the state to uncover better ways to treat and prevent all types of disease.

The ambitious effort would not just move in genetic informationbut also medical, environmental and lifestyle data for a so-called biobank that researchers could use to identify patterns in the population and better understand what ails us.

Finally, scientists pharmaceutical companyGeneticists and others could use insights to design interventions for groups of people and tailor care to individuals, an idea known as precision or individualized medicine.

Some of this is already happening, as the increasing use of genetic testing allows doctors to know, for example, who has a genetic predisposition to breast cancer or other types of cancer.

“This is an opportunity for Maryland’s diverse community to partner with researchers to better understand how our biology, lifestyle and local environment affect our health,” said Toni Pollin, co-principal investigator and associate professor of medicine at the medical school. “We also expect it will help us accelerate our understanding of how individuals and their health care provider can use information about genetic variations to predict, prevent, detect and treat diseases.”

The project is called My Healthy Maryland and is a collaboration between the School of Medicine, the University of Maryland Medical Center and the 13-Hospital University of Maryland Medical System.

The biobank is independently developed and operated, but follows the development of other state banks and a national bank founded in 2018 by the National Institutes of Health called All of Us. This bank aims to enroll a million people and has enrolled several hundred thousand participants.

Last month, the national biobank made data from nearly 20,000 people with COVID-19 available to researchers studying prevention, disease progression and so-called long COVID, when people develop new or persistent symptoms for a longer period of time after initial infection. The bank also offers 57,600 responses to a survey on the social determinants of health, such as how people access food, their level of safety and their experiences of discrimination in healthcare.

The size of the bank will help researchers, officials said at the time.

“The combination of data in the All of Us dataset — provided by participants from a wide range of communities and backgrounds — provides researchers with an unprecedented resource to study how different aspects of our lives are impacting us health consequencessaid Dr. Josh Denny, CEO of the All of Us Research Program, in a statement.

In some cases, national and state-level participants have their entire genome sequenced, giving researchers a complete genetic blueprint for a person’s body. Sequencing everyone remains prohibitively expensive, researchers say.

The data for all contained in the Maryland Biobank are from saliva samples, medical records and surveys of how people live.

Researchers hope to learn risk factors for specific diseases and determine which treatments work best for people from different backgrounds and which ones may not work at all. Along the way, attendees will receive feedback on insights that affect them and have the opportunity to enroll clinical studies that meet their terms.

Pollin said the Bank of Maryland will focus on underserved groups in the state so researchers can address numerous longstanding health disparities that lead to more illness and earlier deaths in certain people.

Researchers cite Maryland’s diversity: One-third of residents are African American, more than 10% are Hispanic, and 6% are Asian. One in seven people was born outside the United States, with most people hailing from El Salvador, India, China and Nigeria. Residents also live in cities, suburban counties, and rural and coastal areas. Each area has different environmental conditions and even dietary habits.

All possible uses of the biobank are not yet known, Pollin said; Genetics is a rapidly growing field. She hopes to use the bank for her longstanding diabetes research.

“We hope to gain a better understanding of some complicated things like diabetes and cancer, where there’s often a complex intersection of genes and lifestyle,” she said. “We need a lot of people to recognize patterns.”

The researchers are working with digital health research company Vibrent Health to host the study on its platform. It will collect information from participant surveys, biosamples, electronic health records, wearable technology, and other sources. All health information is stored anonymously.

“We are committed to working with research institutions like UMSOM to go digital health Research accessible to people from diverse communities historically underrepresented in biomedical research,” said Praduman “PJ” Jain, CEO of Vibrent Health, in a statement.

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