Our Future Health Secures £100 Million in Funding from Illumina, Roche, Thermo Fisher and Other Industry Leaders to Advance Large-Scale Preventive Health Research

Recently, the UK’s “Our Future Health” project announced that it has received £100 million in funding from multiple industry partners., including Alnylam, Amgen, AstraZeneca, GSK, Illumina, Janssen Research & Development, Johnson & Johnson, MSD, Regeneron Genetics Center, Roche, and Thermo Fisher Scientific.

The Our Future Health project attempts to include5 million participants`, Hope`Gain a broad understanding of the health status of the national population while developing new methods for the prevention and treatment of diseases and health conditions., including cancer, Alzheimer's disease, heart disease, arthritis, diabetes, and stroke, among others. Currently, the project has entered its trial phase and recruited 3,000 volunteers in collaboration with NHS Blood and Transplant and the NIHR BioResource.

Professor John Bell, Chairman of the Our Future Health Project"It indicates that: 'The social, medical, and economic burden of chronic diseases is increasing. Addressing this issue requires strong cooperation between the life sciences sector and health systems. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we have witnessed the power of collaboration as vaccines, diagnostic tools, and treatments were rapidly developed and deployed to the NHS at an unprecedented speed and scale.'"

The UK government-funded investment department, UK Research and Innovation, provided the initial £79 million to fund the project, which also received funding from the NHSX AI Lab, specifically to support the generation of polygenic risk scores and provide feedback to participating volunteers.

"The Our Future Health initiative aims to harness the power of collaboration. Support from the industry and charitable organizations, along with government funding, means that we are..."Build “Our Future Health” into a world-leading health research program. It is hoped that this will lay the foundation for a bold new approach within the NHS,This method focuses on the early detection and prevention of diseases."We look forward to more participants joining this exciting project," said Professor Bell.

The ProjectOneThe main focus is on developing new methods to identify diseases such as cancer and heart disease before symptoms appear.According to the introduction of the Our Future Health project, in the UK, only 55% of cancers are diagnosed at stage one or two, and more than 5.5 million people are living with undiagnosed hypertension.

"Millions of people around the world experience poor health in their later years. The Our Future Health project aims to address this issue andBy creating the largest health research project in the UK to prevent, detect, and treat diseases, helping people live healthier and longer lives."Our Future Health project CEO Dr. Andrew Roddam mentioned, 'By establishing a world-leading health research resource that truly reflects the demographics of the UK population, we can gain a more detailed understanding of what makes some individuals more susceptible to certain health issues, thereby enabling the development of more effective detection and treatment methods in the future.'"

During the trial research phase, the Our Future Health project plans to test its operations and procedures among 3,000 volunteers to ensure the overall system functions well. If all goes smoothly, the project will open to the public in the first quarter of 2022. Currently, volunteers recruited through NHS blood donation centers have completed online health survey questionnaires and, with informed consent, agreed to link their medical records and donated blood samples to the Our Future Health project. Meanwhile, the project also asks volunteers whether they can be contacted for additional research in the future or be given the opportunity to receive personalized health feedback.

References:

U.K.’s Our Future Health Aims to Transform Disease Prevention, Detection, Treatment

https://www.insideprecisionmedicine.com/population-genomics/u-k-s-our-future-health-aims-to-transform-disease-prevention-detection-treatment/