National impact

One of the major early breakthroughs of FinnGen was raising interest of the large international pharmaceutical companies, which has continued as the project has made progress. With the help of this funding, FinnGen has been able to create its unique genome and health data resource that can now be widely used to boost the activities of the Finnish health research ecosystem.

Visibility and branding

FinnGen has increased Finland's visibility among international health stakeholders. The project’s execution has been successful and it has achieved its goals on schedule, which has boosted our country's appeal as a partner in large scale genomics projects. A tangible indicator of FinnGen’s success is the increase in partners from the pharmaceutical industry. Initially, seven international pharmaceutical companies joined the project in 2017, and since then, seven more have become partners. The Finnish SMEs consider FinnGen a significant reference for their operations and several Finnish companies are subcontractors, service providers or collaborators of FinnGen.  

Finnish academic researchers 

The complete FinnGen data resource is available to all researchers at all participating Finnish universities and university hospitals in real time as the resource grows. By data freeze 12/13, in September 2023, phenotype-genotype data of 520 210 individuals was available and accessible for analyses for FinnGen partners. In spring 2024, more than 640  academic researchers from Finland have applied and received access to the latest results (so called green access) and of these researchers 340 have access to the individual-level data, which allows them to pursue more in-depth analyses. 

Access to this vast data resource also provides a significant advantage to Finnish research groups when publishing their work and applying for highly competitive EU and other research funding.

Finnish biobank network 

FinnGen has had an enormous impact on the Finnish biobank landscape, since it has facilitated the collection of samples in almost all Finnish biobanks. A significant part of FinnGen’s funding has been used for supporting the sample collection, DNA extraction and genotyping activities.

Thanks to FinnGen, Finnish biobanks now contain genome data of over half a million Finns. The genomic data produced by FinnGen is returned to Finnish biobanks, thus increasing the national capacity and prospects for further studies through the biobanks.

In FinnGen 2, together with FINBB, a process to support spin-off projects was developed. As a result, FINBB has supported several feasibility requests from FinnGen’s pharma partners and beyond. This has enabled Finnish biobanks to collaborate with industry partners outside the scope of FinnGen.