UK Biobank

Based in Stockport, Greater Manchester, UK Biobank is incorporated as a limited company and registered charity in England and Wales, and registered as a charity in Scotland.

UK Biobank holds more than 10,000 variables of data on many of their 500,000 participants to inform research including biological samples, physical measurements, body and brain imaging data, bone density data, activity tracking and lifestyle questionnaire data. Participants continue to provide more data over time. They have over 15 million biological samples stored, which can be requested for use by researchers, and their online database holds over 30 petabytes of data. Their human genome sequencing database, proteomic database, and human imaging project are the largest in the world. The project is enabling scientists to study the onset of diseases such as cancers, heart disease, and age-related conditions in the early stages of their development. Nature has referred to UK Biobank as an "unprecedented open access database."

Since 2012, 30,000 researchers from over 90 countries have registered to use UK Biobank. As of November 2023, there have been over 9,000 peer-reviewed publications using UK Biobank data, including over 3,000 in 2023.

UK Biobank is funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC), the Wellcome Trust, UK government and charitable sources, and philanthropic donations.

UK Biobank was conceived in the early 2000s and founded in November 2003. Professor Sir Rory Collins was appointed as the Principal Investigator and Chief Executive of UK Biobank in 2005.' An incremental approach was adopted to developing the study procedures and technology, using systems designed and developed by the Clinical Trial Service Unit (CTSU). This consisted of a series of pilot studies of increasing complexity and sophistication with interludes for assessment of results and additional scientific input. In-house trials were conducted during 2005, and a fully integrated clinic was run at Altrincham, Greater Manchester throughout Spring 2006 where 3,800 individuals were assessed. On 22 August 2006, it was announced that the main programme would recruit men and women aged between 40 and 69 based from up to 35 regional centres.

Following the initial pilot stage in the 2005–06 period, the main study began in April 2007 and by the end of that year 50,000 people had taken part. Recruitment reached 100,000 in April 2008, 200,000 in October 2008, 300,000 in May 2009, 400,000 in November 2009 and passed the 500,000 target in July 2010. The volunteers were largely healthy, wealthy and white European. Rather than recruiting more participants into the biobank, the organisation is helping other institutions establish and run similar initiatives. Participant enrolment was declared complete in August 2010. However recruitment proved more efficient than hoped and only 22 centres had been opened when the recruitment target of 500,000 was reached in 2010.

In May 2023, UKRI announced that UK Biobank was set to receive £127.6 million to move to a purpose-built facility at Bruntwood SciTech's Manchester Science Park.

In October 2023, a number of funders including Eric Schmidt and Ken Griffin announced further funding for the next five years.

The study is following about 500,000 volunteers in the UK, enrolled at ages from 40 to 69. Initial enrolment took place over four years from 2006, and the volunteers will be followed for at least 30 years thereafter.

Prospective participants were invited to visit an assessment centre, at which they completed an automated questionnaire and were interviewed about lifestyle, medical history and nutritional habits; basic variables such as weight, height, blood pressure etc. were measured; and blood and urine samples were taken. These samples were preserved so that it was possible to later extract DNA and measure other biologically important substances. During the whole duration of the study it was intended that all disease events, drug prescriptions and deaths of the participants are recorded in a database, taking advantage of the centralized UK National Health Service.

During the initial physical examination, basic feedback was provided to the participant regarding their weight, height, BMI, blood pressure, lung vital capacity, bone density and intra-ocular pressure; however if any other medical problems were detected, neither the participant nor their physician would be notified. Problems detected later, such as genetic risk factors, were not conveyed to either participant or physician ("to ensure that volunteers are not penalised by insurance companies, for example, which may require customers to disclose the results of any genetic tests.").

From 2012 researchers were able to apply to use the database (though they are not given access to the volunteers, who will remain strictly anonymous). A typical study using the database might compare a sample of participants who developed a particular disease, such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes or Alzheimer's disease, with a sample of those that did not, in an attempt to measure the benefits, risk contribution and interaction of specific genes, lifestyles, and medications.

In 2017 researchers were able to access the database including genetic information. …

Following the initial pilot stage in the 2005–06 period, the main study began in April 2007 and by the end of that year 50,000 people had taken part. Recruitment reached 100,000 in April 2008, 200,000 in October 2008, 300,000 in May 2009, 400,000 in November 2009 and passed the 500,000 target in July 2010. Participant enrolment was declared complete in August 2010. The volunteers were largely healthy, wealthy and white European. Rather than recruiting more participants into the biobank, the organisation is helping other institutions establish and run similar initiatives.

The UK Biobank dataset was opened to applications from researchers in March 2012. The resource is available to scientists from the UK and outside, whether they work in the public or private sector, for industry, academia or a charity, subject to verification that the research is health-related and in the public interest. Researchers must register to be approved to use UK Biobank data. Researchers are required to publish their results in an open source publication site or in an academic journal and return their findings to the UK Biobank.

In 2021 UK Biobank launched its cloud-based Research Analysis Platform (UKB-RAP), providing information technology infrastructure to store and analyse UK Biobank's large dataset regardless of the researcher's own technological capabilities. By 2023 the platform had over 5,000 users. The platform is hosted by Amazon Web Services, which also pledged $1.5 million in research credits for early career researchers and researchers from low and low-middle income countries to reduce limitations when collating, storing and securely accessing data.

By 2023 30,000 researchers had registered to use the resource and over 9,000 peer-reviewed articles based on UK Biobank data had been published.