Skip to main content
Premium Trial:

Request an Annual Quote

Finnish THL Biobank Joins BC Platforms' Global Biobank Network

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – BC Platforms said today that THL Biobank, hosted by the Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), is joining BC Platforms' global network of biobanks, bringing with it extensive datasets from approximately 150,000 donors.

The datasets include multi-omic cohorts that could be used for various purposes, including accelerating the development of new drugs or diagnostics, biomarker validation, identification of disease risk factors, and stratification of patients. Through the network, BC Platforms provides its BCRQUEST.com platform to all the participants for secure data sharing, analytics, and governance, enabling greater collaboration.

This new partnership will link and integrate THL Biobank data sources to one bioanalytic platform in order to facilitate and support scientific research in the public interest, BC Platforms said. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

"We are delighted to partner with a leader in this space who can safely and securely provide our rich data sets to a broader researcher network. The service will provide academia and industry a window to the existing data and communication tools to prepare research proposals, coordinate collaboration, and request data and samples for research projects," THL Biobank Director Sirpa Soini said in a statement.

BC Platforms CEO Tero Silvola also noted that biobanks using the company's BCRQUEST.com platform can select which data from their collections they'd like to securely share with pharmaceutical companies in order to establish research projects. "The life science industry benefits from this global pool of harmonized biobank data to gain scientific insights with the goal of reducing drug development timelines and bringing benefits to the patients worldwide," he added.