Nearly £50 million unlocked for world-leading UK Biobank following new industry backing

Research being used to develop new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat diseases like dementia, Parkinson's, diabetes and cancer will benefit from a £16 million boost to upgrade how UK Biobank uses and stores its growing wealth of health data.

Announced by the Science and Technology Secretary Peter Kyle today (Thursday 25 July), Amazon Web Services (AWS) will provide $10 million (around £8 million) worth of cloud computing credits to help ensure UK Biobank has the cloud infrastructure it needs to securely store and handle its unrivalled wealth of health data. This contribution will give UK Biobank circa £8 million in AWS credits, providing access to data storage as well as other AWS services, such as AI and machine learning.

This will be matched by a further £8 million in government investment, and forms part of the public, private and philanthropic group set up to keep the world-leading facility at the forefront of medical research.

In October last year, a public-philanthropic consortium was set up to ensure UK Biobank's long-term future, with initial funding donated by Eric Schmidt and Ken Griffin, and matched by government to a total of £32 million. Today's further contribution means almost £50 million backing has now been achieved for UK Biobank – putting fundraising efforts in touching distance of the ultimate goal for funding which was set out when that initial funding was announced. 

UK Biobank is the world's most advanced source of data for health research, helping the life sciences sector to transform healthcare for people across the UK and worldwide. It is a database of in-depth genetic, health and lifestyle information from half a million UK volunteers. Researchers worldwide can apply to access to an unparalleled volume of de-identified and secure data, and are using it to enable medical breakthroughs, from detecting cardiac disease earlier, to developing tests for Alzheimer's. De-identified UK Biobank data is already accessible, securely and worldwide, for approved researchers on the UK Biobank Research Analysis platform, which is hosted on AWS and enabled by DNAnexus.

Visiting UK Biobank today, Science Secretary Peter Kyle said:

UK Biobank is helping researchers around the world tackle some of the biggest health problems facing humanity – from dementia to heart disease – by putting an unprecedented scale of information at their fingertips.

This research is helping us develop the treatments that will improve and hopefully prolong all our lives.

This contribution from Amazon Web Services – matched by government – will mean that UK Biobank has the cloud infrastructure it needs, to underpin such a vast undertaking. This is just the start of our plan to work hand-in-hand with industry and academia, to harness the power of life sciences to grow our economy and boost healthcare.

Minister for Science Lord Vallance said:

While the UK is an enviable destination for life sciences research, tackling the profound challenges that diseases like dementia and cancer pose to society, and the economy, is simply too vast a task for any one country to face alone. By giving approved researchers the world over, access to an unrivalled volume of health data, UK Biobank exemplifies how a collaborative approach to science can make both the UK and the world healthier and more prosperous.

Advances in science and health succeed best when we work together – and that applies to close partnership with the private sector, as well. Amazon Web Services' contribution – recognising the unique value of UK Biobank's work – shows the value these partnerships can unlock, and precisely why we want to build even closer relationships to tackle healthcare challenges and unlock growth.

John Davies, Director, UK Public Sector at Amazon Web Services, said:

We are delighted that UK Biobank is extending its use of the AWS Cloud to give approved researchers around the world access to the vital data that will support medical breakthroughs. UK Biobank has the largest dataset of whole genome sequences in the world, with data from an aging cohort that is almost 20 years old.

In using AWS, UK Biobank is able to store this vast amount of health data securely, and scale up the data platform quickly and easily, as more data is added in the future. Using cloud infrastructure to store and access data will also help UK Biobank unlock the benefits of more advanced digital capabilities such as machine learning and artificial intelligence, which will further speed-up research advancements in healthcare.

Professor Sir Rory Collins, Chief Executive Officer and Principal Investigator of UK Biobank, said: 

This contribution will make our participants very happy, as it means the data they have provided can be used by even more researchers around the world. We are truly grateful for this contribution from Amazon Web Services and the UK government. This means vital data can be accessed by researchers from less wealthy countries, or who are starting out in research, as well as those at large universities, charities and companies. By bringing together so many researchers, with different viewpoints and questions, to investigate the data, we have a much better chance of helping improve the lives of everyone, everywhere.

Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, said:

UK Biobank isn't just a major asset for Greater Manchester's health and life sciences sector – it's one of the most important health research facilities in the world. Its database plays a vital role in enabling new discoveries that improve public health, and the work done there shows what can be achieved when academia, the public and private sectors come together and use their strengths to address some of our biggest healthcare challenges.

It was a privilege to welcome the Secretary of State and Science Minister to Greater Manchester to show them some of the groundbreaking innovation and commercialisation happening here. We have an opportunity to be a global leader in health innovation and life sciences – growing our regional and national economy while leading work that transforms the health of the population.

UK Biobank is supporting ground-breaking advancements in healthcare, such as the development of genetic tests to detect people who have an increased risk of coronary heart disease (note 1), only made possible via analysis of UK Biobank's genomic data. During the pandemic, UK Biobank data helped researchers deepen their understanding of how lifestyle and inherited factors impacted how patients were affected by COVID-19. 

The consortium supporting UK Biobank will deliver a transformative investment into its future research capacity. This builds on UK Research and Innovation's 2023 £127.6 million investment in UK Biobank's new headquarters at Bruntwood SciTech's Manchester Science Park, set to open in 2026.

UK Biobank's database is regularly augmented with new data, such as a recent addition of the largest-ever set of whole genome sequencing data, the largest ever proteomic dataset, and the on-going results of the world's largest imaging study of whole-body scanning. All of this data will enable researchers to open up new ways to investigate disease mechanisms, particularly for common diseases of older and middle-age, from depression and anxiety to coronary heart disease, cancer and osteoporosis. 

Greater Manchester has the largest concentration of biomedical health research in the UK outside the South East of England and is located at the heart of a dynamic life sciences cluster in the North West. The city-region has particular strengths in diagnostics, genomics, precision medicine and digital health, and its health R&D assets are integrated with its devolved health and social care system to accelerate research into practice.

References

1. Genome-wide polygenic scores for common diseases identify individuals with risk equivalent to monogenic mutations, Khera & Kathiresan et al, Nature Genetics, August 2018.  

Notes to editors 

We are building a consortium of philanthropic and industry partners to draw in donations to UK Biobank over a 5-year period. The UK government has made an in-principle commitment of up to £25 million over 5 years, provided that this matched by philanthropic donations to the consortium.   

Philanthropic supporters are backing UK Biobank because it is the most comprehensive health research study in the world, putting it in pole position to help the scientific community better understand a range of common and life-threatening diseases.  

Contributions are entirely philanthropic and do not entail any control over UK Biobank or its operations. 

UK Biobank is a large-scale biomedical database and research resource containing de-identified genetic, lifestyle and health information and biological samples from half a million UK participants. It is the most comprehensive and widely-used dataset of its kind, and is globally accessible to approved researchers who are undertaking health-related research that is in the public interest, whether they are from academic, commercial, government or charitable settings.

UK Biobank is helping to advance modern medicine and enable better understanding of the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of a wide range of serious and life-threatening illnesses – including cancer, heart disease and stroke. Over 30,000 researchers from more than 90 countries are registered to use UK Biobank and more than 10,000 peer-reviewed papers have been published as a result. UK Biobank is supported by Wellcome and the Medical Research Council, as well as the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, the UK government's National Institute for Health and Care Research and Department of Science, Innovation and Technology, Griffin Catalyst and Schmidt Futures.