June 2010

Only seven years after the completion of the human genome mapping by researchers of the Human Genome Project (HUGO Project), a Quebec scientific team is halfway through their goal of creating a 20 000 people biobank. The purpose of this biobank is to study the effects of environment and lifestyle of a society on the health of its population.

Every person is genetically unique and thus, has unique predispositions to develop certain illnesses and diseases. However, constant reproduction between members of a same, small community creates a situation where some genes become more common in the population's genome, sometimes allowing for some diseases to become more frequent. The CARTaGENE scientists aim to create a database and a biobank to "study the effects of these genomic factors on an aging population" and eventually help creating effective treatments against those diseases. To do so, the team will randomly select 20 000 people aged between 40 and 69 years old from four metropolitan regions of the province (Montreal, Sherbrooke, Saguenay and Quebec city) and store the data collected in the database and the biobank. The database will include demographic, environmental and health-related data on the patients. When the 20 000 people goal is attained, approximately 1% of the targeted population will have seen its genomic information collected by the CARTaGENE banks.

In addition to considerably advancing our understanding of genomic science by allowing researchers to access its data, the CARTaGENE project will greatly contribute in making Canada a world leader in the domain.

The obvious purpose of such biobank is to reduce the number of cancers and other chronic diseases in the long run.