Under an initiative of Japan’s Agency for Medical Research and Development AMED, this collaboration among six institutions and five sites will sequence and mutually utilize genomic cohort data of 366,000 people. The project is expected to promote the elucidation of genetic predisposition affecting the onset of diseases in the Japanese population and the construction of risk prediction models. It will also contribute to next-generation medical care, such as personalized medicine, personalized prevention, and risk prediction tailored to each individual’s constitution. 

Outside of Japan, genomic cohort studies involving several hundred thousand to one million people are The Million Veteran Program (MVP), which started in 2021 in the U.S. with more than 820,000 participants, and the UK Biobank, which started in 2006 in the U.K. and targets British more than 500,000 volunteers.

The DNA microarrays used at the six institutions and five sites are the Geponica array developed by ToMMo for the TMM project and the TMC Illuminas array.

Nikkei Biotech news release, May 28, 2021