Recruitment

The samples FinnGen uses have been collected by the Finnish biobanks and FinnGen has applied for permission to use the samples, as outlined in the Finnish Biobank Act.

By the end of 2023, FinnGen had amassed genome and longitudinal health data from over 500,000 Finns, constituting nearly 10% of the Finnish population. To achieve this more than 550 000 samples from biobank participants were delivered to the FinnGen study through the biobanks. 

The FinnGen cohort was deliberately structured to include a disproportionate number of individuals with diseases. This was achieved through a combination of pre-existing collections, characterised by a relatively high average participant age, and targeted recruitment from specific hospital clinics to capture less common diseases and those associated with advanced age, which are typically underrepresented in most population studies. This deliberate enrichment strategy offers FinnGen distinct advantages for uncovering genetic factors related to diseases.

FinnGen study participants can be classified into three primary categories:

  1. Approximately 200,000 individuals are part of earlier sample collections spanning from the late 1980s to the inception of FinnGen in 2017. These "legacy samples" originate from various population-based studies such as Finrisk/FinTerveys, the Twin Study, Northern Finnish birth cohorts from 1966 and 1986, ATBC, and Health 2000. FinnGen also includes a considerable number of samples from legacy collections specific to certain diseases, such as Botnia (Diabetes), T1D (type 1 diabetes), migraine, and SUPER (psychosis), with the majority (~160,000) housed in the THL Biobank's collections.
  2. The second category comprises around 300,000 individuals from a prospective biobank sample collection initiated just before the start of FinnGen in 2017. These samples were predominantly gathered by hospital biobanks and the Terveystalo biobank (a private sector healthcare provider), with a notable emphasis on capturing individuals with diseases due to their collection in hospital clinics.
  3. The third set encompasses approximately 58,000 individuals and their samples collected from blood donors through the Finnish Blood Service. This group primarily consists of healthy individuals of working age.