“BioBank Japan” toward the personalized medicine
The “Personalized medicine” project started in June 2003 by the support of the Japanese government. The aims of this project are 1) discovery of genes susceptible to diseases, or those related to effectiveness or adverse reactions of various drugs, 2) identification of molecular targets for evidence-based development of drugs or diagnostic tools, 3) identification of the important genetic information that can be applied for establishment of “Personalized Medicine” and 4) studies on gene-environment interaction for prevention of diseases. To achieve these goals, we planed to collect of DNAs, sera and clinical information from 300,000 patients who have either of 47 common diseases by March 2007. As the research resource bank, we constructed “BioBank Japan” that consisted of facilities that are able to store DNAs (the maximum capacity of 1,000,000 tubes; fully-automated sample handling system) and sera (the maximum capacity of 3,000,000 tubes in liquid nitrogen; semi-automated handling system). We also established clinical information database as a part of “BioBank Japan” activity. For protection of individual privacy, we introduced 1) two-step anonymalization of individual identification code by two-dimension code system and 2) avoidance of placing individual identification information with genotyping information together. By January 15, 2006, we have obtained a written informed consent from more than 130,000 patients (a total number of disease cases is more than 185,000 because of multiple diseases in one patient) from 66 hospitals participating in this project. We have been performing the genome-wide association studies using 250,000 SNPs, which can cover 98.5% of our genome, to identify genes of medical importance. Accumulative data should provide us the basis to identify genes associated with common diseases and to establish the personalized treatment.