An Exciting Start to 2022: Our Collaboration with the UK's Largest Ever Research Program

For those of use who have dedicated our careers to developing good drugs for bad diseases, 2022 is kicking off with a bang, and I couldn't be more excited. Actually, a better word to describe my enthusiasm is "empowered."

One reason why? Our Future Health, the UK's largest ever health research program, was launched this week. Through this initiative, information from millions of volunteers from all backgrounds and ethnic groups across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will be collected to create one of the most detailed pictures we've ever had of how health changes as people age. This will enable scientists to find some of the earliest signs of the most challenging diseases too many millions of people are living with every year: cancer, dementia, heart disease, arthritis, diabetes, and stroke.

I'm very pleased @Amgen is a partner in Our Future Health. In addition to supporting this resource for researchers from universities, charities, the NHS and industry, we'll have access to the data and samples for our own genetics-related discovery work. This collaboration reflects our long-held belief in the power of human genetics to transform medicine and our belief that growth in the size and diversity of data sets will be instrumental in enabling scientific insights. We are deeply grateful to all of the volunteers who will choose to participate in this groundbreaking project.

Combined with our collaboration with UK BioBank, the most ambitious genome sequencing project of its time which is following the health of 500,000 older volunteers, the data from Our Future Health will provide information about the whole genomes of large and diverse populations. Insights from these data, combined with a deep understanding of biology and technical innovation in biotechnology and tech, are key to our ability to improve disease diagnosis and prevention, and to design new medicines.

But the insights from Our Future Health will extend far beyond genetics. As my colleague @Ray Deshaies has said, "Human genetics is like a polaroid snapshot of an individual: unchanging. What we really want is more like a movie." That means adding more frames. More human data - molecular and clinical - from Our Future Health will give us just that: more images, different angles, more information to complete the picture and provide better resolution for discovery. Ideally, this clarity will also provide a pathway for faster and more efficient development and approval of transformative medicines.

For 2022, I'm not making resolutions. I'm making plans. For more information about Our Future Health, visit https://ourfuturehealth.org.uk/research-programme/

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