Science Health Education Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute launched the SHE Biobank initiative, a large, long-term study that will investigate the impact of genetic predisposition and environmental exposure to the development of disease
The SHE Center’s goal is to bring best practices, better health outcomes, and increased stability to developing countries including the Middle East and North Africa, a region urgently in need of all three.
Navid Madani, director of the SHE Center and a senior scientist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, has led educational workshops and training programs in the region, which reinforced the understanding of the current lack of health data infrastructure and solidified the need for such platforms in the region.
“Biobanking is crucial to this research and helps researchers, healthcare providers and governments to health policies and assign resources properly. In recent years, due to advancements in healthcare technologies, data availability and decreasing DNA sequencing costs, various biobanks have been created around the world,” Madani said in a statement.
“However, the majority of such projects have been launched in developed countries, contributing to an increasing gap between developed and developing countries. This initiative aims to decrease that gap,” Madani said.
The SHE Biobank offers researchers to conduct studies and the infrastructure it provides so the data can be put into action for public good. It also helps increase readiness of the healthcare community to prevent or combat future disease outbreaks.
“The recent COVID-19 pandemic has shown the importance of availability of digital health platforms to provide access to data and enable research and collaboration at scale for a large size of population,” Shayan Mashatian, founder of Silverberry Genomix, said in a statement. “By making the Silverberry platform available to this critical endeavor, we are facilitating a rapid launch of the project, connecting the researchers, healthcare institutions and other interested parties so more people can take advantage of scientific advancement, preventing disease or empower the emerging field of precision medicine.”
Researchers, universities, government agencies, companies, and foundations as well as individual participants, are invited to participate in the initiative.
