The NIHR (National Institute of Health & Care Research) has awarded £39.8 million to Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CUH) to support the next stage of the NIHR BioResource. The funding is for four years from 1 April 2025.
The NIHR BioResource is a national resource that brings scientists together with a network of over 300,000 volunteers who want to participate in medical research. With nearly 1.5 million samples and data collected, the BioResource aims to be fully representative of the UK population.
I find it interesting to participate and was welcomed by all. It takes just a few moments, costs me nothing and is an essential part of research making a real difference.
NIHR BioResource volunteer
The new funding will allow the BioResource to continue supporting research, and specifically to expand support for studies on mental health, improving health inequalities and young people’s health. This will include progress on the recently-launched Improving Black Health Outcomes (opens in a new tab) programme, created to encourage dedicated research into health conditions and experience of black communities in the UK.
As the NIHR BioResource has grown we’ve been able to focus our efforts on supporting research into key areas of need. Thanks to the NIHR we can continue to provide this valued national research resource, and will continue work to engage and support black communities, young people and address the deficiency in mental health research.
Dr Nathalie Kingston, Director, NIHR BioResource
Cambridge is the national coordinating centre for the NIHR BioResource, which is hosted by CUH in partnership with the University of Cambridge.
The BioResource was created in Cambridge in 2008, with the aim of creating a diverse set of samples and participants that could volunteer to take part in scientific studies.
Since 2012, the NIHR has funded the BioResource to grow into a national asset with 18 sites across the UK. The BioResource has contributed to over 360 studies, and publication of over 460 scientific papers.
In the UK we’re uniquely equipped to bring together people, and their health and genetic data, to drive scientific discoveries that improve healthcare. The BioResource has become a key national asset, and this new funding from the NIHR will enable many more studies to work with an increasingly diverse range of people to find out more about human biology and health.
Professor John Bradley, NIHR BioResource Chief Investigator
Recent achievements
- The NIHR BioResource transformed the NHS’s approach to diagnosing rare diseases by contributing to the 100,000 Genomes Project and demonstrating that whole genome sequencing (opens in a new tab) speeds up and improves diagnosis.
- The NIHR BioResource supported the development of the NHS blood group genotyping test (opens in a new tab). Now nearly 18,000 people in England, with sickle cell disorder and thalassaemia, can have a world-first genetic test to better match future blood transfusions, reducing their risk of side effects.
- The Genes and Cognition BioResource (opens in a new tab) is testing the cognition of 21,500 healthy and patient volunteers over time for further insight into brain health and potential future therapies.
- The DNA Children and Young People’s Health Resource (D-CYPHR) (opens in a new tab) is the world’s first genetics health research programme open to every child in the country using online recruitment.
- The Inflammatory Bowel Disease BioResource (opens in a new tab) established a patient and public review group which developed an award-winning national approach to how health data are accessed for research, and has helped to identify mechanisms (opens in a new tab) and genetic changes (opens in a new tab) that underly the causes of IBD and its treatment.
Read the announcement from NIHR (opens in a new tab)
Find out more about the BioResource and how you can join on the NIHR BioResource website.