PUT IT IN THE BIOBANK
One part of the hunt starts in a nondescript building in west London, where volunteers line up to reveal their innermost secrets. While many have given blood before, this time they are donating their DNA and medical records, both past and future, to a vast experiment that will track them to the grave.
It sounds Orwellian. Yet volunteers checking into UK Biobank -- backed by the government and the Wellcome Trust -- are keen to participate in something that might help their children or grandchildren.
This age group, 40 to 69 years, has been chosen because the volunteers won't keep researchers waiting too long before developing interesting conditions such as cancer, arthritis, diabetes, heart disease and dementia.
So far some 450,000 Britons have signed up, consenting to have their DNA sequenced and their health tracked, anonymously, through the National Health Service.
The target of 500,000 should be reached around July, by which time the project's giant freezer facility in northern England will have the equivalent of two road tankers worth of frozen blood samples.
Principal investigator Dr. Rory Collins says it is only by doing such large-scale sampling that scientists can uncover how lifestyle factors interact with a long list of rare genetic variants to cause common diseases.
"If you are looking for the effect of lots and lots of different genetic variants that are producing modest effects and they're interacting with a lot of non-genetic factors, then you need to be able to do studies that are very, very big," he said. "It's only just now that the technology allows those experiments to be done."
China, Sweden and other countries have also set up biobanks but the British one is the most comprehensive in terms of the number of factors studied. Organizers hope it will go beyond what earlier biobanks produced -- like one in Iceland that helped create gene-hunting firm Decode Genetics.
Working out of a glass-and-steel building on the outskirts of Reykjavik, Decode's scientists have peppered the scientific literature with reports on common DNA variants linked to schizophrenia, cancer and other diseases by trawling the country's genetic heritage, which has changed little since the Vikings arrived more than 1,000 years ago.
Understanding a few of the pieces of the gene puzzle, however, was not enough to shore up Decode's ailing business and the former Nasdaq-listed company filed for bankruptcy protection last November. It re-emerged as a private business in January.
Decode was one of a number of biotech start-ups that rode the first wave of genomics, offering the technological tools needed to understand the links between genes and diseases. Many fell by the wayside after just a couple of years -- but not all.
Human Genome Sciences Inc is one that finally looks set for prime time. Its shares have skyrocketed since last year, when it reported unexpectedly strong data from a trial of its experimental lupus drug Benlysta.
Last March the company was trading as low as 45 cents; now its shares hover around $30. If approved, the drug, which is being developed in partnership with GlaxoSmithKline Plc, would be the first new treatment for lupus, a serious immune system disease, in more than 50 years.