The Partners Biobank has announced the release of genomic data for nearly 5,000 subjects. The data are available now to all BWH investigators for free.

Over the next two years, the Partners Biobank plans to collect genetic information on 25,000 subjects. Genomic data for the first batch of 5,000 subjects are available now, and data for the remaining 20,000 subjects will be released every six months. The subjects were genotyped using the Illumina Multi-Ethnic GWAS/Exome SNP Array (MEGArray chip), which covers more than 1.7 million markers in the genome.

The Partners Biobank is a research program designed to help researchers understand how people’s health is affected by their genes, lifestyle and environment, and consists of a repository of consented samples (DNA, serum, and plasma) and health information (including genomic data). More than 33,000 patients are consented to the Biobank and 1,000-1,500 are added every month. Biobank services include:

• DNA, serum, plasma
• Patient recontact
• Survey data on lifestyle, behavioral and environmental factors and family history
• Validated disease phenotypes
• Calculated controls based on Charlson index
• Genomic data

All of this data may be accessed in the Biobank Portal (http://biobankportal.partners.org), a web-based tool that enables querying and downloading of the data and enables requests for samples and genomic data.

“The Biobank offers a rich, centralized resource that will allow our researchers to be competitive, and we encourage all of investigators to take advantage of it,” said Jacqueline Slavik, PhD, executive director of the Brigham Research Institute.

For more information, please visit http://biobankportal.partners.org/mediawiki/ or email biobank@partners.org.