UK's ambitious project is trailing behind its counterpart in Japan.

Biobanks in the UK and Japan aim to collect biological samples from their populations. Credit: Zuma Press/Rob DeLorenzo

Handsomely funded and backed by the government, the UK Biobank project was publicly launched in April 2003 with great fanfare as a resource to combat illnesses such as cancer and heart disease. But two years later, the ambitious project has been slowed by myriad practical hurdles while international competitors are speeding along.

A registered charity with €91 million in funding from the UK's Department of Health, Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust, the Biobank is intended to build a database with blood and urine samples, lifestyle details and National Health Service medical records from half a million volunteers aged 45–69.

The firm's chief information officer, Steve Walker, had hoped to recruit participants starting in September 2005, but the deadline has been pushed back to January 2006. To begin with, staff members are still grappling with predicting what information researchers might need in the future.

“We have to make a judgment now of what data might be useful 20 to 30 years down the line,” says Walker. “If we only have this one opportunity to get these people into our assessment center, then we want to make sure we get as much out of it as we can.”

I've found it very, very difficult to find people that can really grasp the magnitude of what we are trying to do. , Steve Walker, UK Biobank

The project is also trying to assemble systems needed to store the mass of data being generated. Special Oracle software will for the first time be used for a biobank platform, Walker says.

The center also appears not to have fully anticipated the scarcity of people with the right mix of biological and technological skills. “I've found it very, very difficult to find people that can really grasp the magnitude of what we are trying to do,” says Walker. The company's chief executive, Professor John Newton, stepped down from the role in March after just two years in the job and is yet to be replaced.

In the meantime, the initial trials of some assessment centers were completed earlier this year, and the firm is scrambling to prepare for a more wide-ranging test in October, involving up to 3,000 participants over two to three months.

Meanwhile, leaders of Japan's Biobank, also launched in April 2003, announced in May that they have thus far collected 100,000 DNA and serum samples. With $180 million for five years, that project aims to collect 300,000 samples for 47 diseases. It is sending its first 500 samples related to autoimmune disease to a research institute for analysis. Another ten applications are being processed, says the University of Tokyo's Yusuke Nakamura, who heads the project.

The quick clip of Japan's Biobank, which is only available to companies in Japan, could bolster a comeback for a Japanese biotech industry that hasn't been very competitive, Nakamura says. “We can accelerate drug development if public universities and industry realize the value of the resource.”

Besides the torpid pace, the UK project has faced much criticism from scientists, who have been dubious about it from the beginning.

“They want to predict morbidity and mortality from a DNA scan,” says Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College London. But based on factors such as age, weight, gender and smoking habits, any doctor can predict with about 80% accuracy how long you have to live, Jones notes. “So how much more do you need? It may help find some rare cancer genes, but is this the best way to go about it?”

In Japan, Nakamura's considerable power with the country's policymakers allowed him to overcome such questions about the project. Critics such as the Japan Medical Association also voiced concerns about privacy issues and police access to these databases (Nature 424, 359; 2003). But Nakamura says with careful attention to these issues, his team was able to obtain informed consent from 87% of recruited patients.

Jones concedes that critics like him may well be proven wrong. “Years ago, many people like me moaned about the Human Genome Project,” he says. “But at the end it was a triumph.”