World’s largest proteins study ‘invaluable’ for understanding disease – experts
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The world’s largest study of proteins circulating the human body will begin in the UK this month, with the aim of pinpointing how diseases develop and paving the way for simple blood tests to detect the likes of cancer and dementia years before they are diagnosed by doctors.
The UK Biobank Pharma Proteomics Project could be a “crucial piece in the jigsaw puzzle for scientists”, experts suggest, with the potential to transform healthcare by the end of the decade. It will allow researchers to determine how genes, lifestyle and environment cause illness through changes in protein levels in the blood.
There is also the possibility for blood tests to be created to diagnose autoimmune conditions such as multiple sclerosis and Crohn’s disease faster and more accurately. It really might be possible to develop simple blood tests that can detect disease much earlier than currently exists.
Proteomics is the large-scale study of proteins, analysing their role in disease and how their structure and function cause illnesses. This new project is an expansion of a revolutionary pilot programme which published data on almost 3,000 proteins from blood samples of 54,000 UK Biobank participants.
The pilot data has already allowed researchers to identify elevated proteins in patients who go on to develop dementia up to a decade before diagnosis, and seven years before the diagnosis of certain cancers. Professor Sir Rory Collins, principal investigator and chief executive of UK Biobank, said: “The data collected in the study will allow scientists around the world to conduct health-related research, exploring how lifestyle, environment and genetics lead through proteins to some people developing particular diseases, while others do not.
