Kaiser Permanente won an $8.6 million award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to develop a biobank of genetic, environmental and health data that could be used to study genetic and environmental factors in heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s and more.
The repository will house as many as 500,000 DNA samples by 2012....
The foundation said the database will have enough “statistical power to identify even subtle effects of environmental and genetic factors in less common health conditions such as mental health disorders or autoimmune disease.” ...
Two of the first projects coming out of the biobank — starting in 2009 — will be a study of genetic and non-genetic contributors that increase the risk of prostate cancer in African-American men as well as a study of genetics’ involvement in bipolar disorder.
“The unequaled size and power of this biorepository will drive research that can dramatically improve the health and healthcare of millions of Americans,” said foundation CEO Risa Lavizzo-Mourey.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
