FinnGen is a biobank-based genomics project
The FinnGen study is one of the largest biobank research projects in the world. By the end of 2023, FinnGen has collected and correlated genome and longitudinal health data of more than 500 000 Finns, which is almost 10% of the Finnish population. The goal of the project is to improve our understanding of disease predisposition, mechanisms, and progression by analysing the extensive data using advanced approaches in statistical genetics.
FinnGen data
Genomic and other omics data
FinnGen includes array-based genome variant data for 520,000 individuals and sequencing data for a subset of the participants. FinnGen is expanding to generate other biological data, including metabolomics, proteomics, single-nucleus RNA and ATAC sequencing, as well as immunophenotyping data, for a subset of the participants.
Health register data
Most of the phenotype data in FinnGen comes from the national health registers, including hospital, special outpatient and primary care registers, Cancer Register, drug purchase and reimbursement registers, the Population Register and Statistics Finland. These registers capture health care data nationwide across the life course of individuals.
Clinical endpoints
The health register data is used to create disease endpoints for genetic analyses. The current data set has endpoints for over 4500 diseases.
Other phenotype data
FinnGen has acquired, for a limited set of individuals, additional clinical data related to certain prioritised diseases, health questionnaire data and recontacting data. Furthermore, FinnGen has recently include extensive laboratory measurement data from nearly all FinnGen participants from 2014 onward.
Study cohort
Accessing the data or results
Partner researchers
Researchers in organisations that have partnered with the FinnGen study can request access to either newest aggregate results or access to the FinnGen Sandbox environment. Before gaining access to the FinnGen data in Sandbox, a researcher must complete Sandbox training about how to handle personal data and pass a data security exam.
Other researchers
GWAS results based on the full FinnGen dataset are publicly available for the entire research community. The results can be browsed with the web browser and summary statistics data can be downloaded from Google cloud storage free of charge.
FinnGen is based on a wide public-private partnership
FinnGen is a co-creative public-private partnership between academic, biobank and industry partners, shedding light on our genetic make-up. The research is designed, the goals are determined and the analyses planned in a co-creative manner between industry and academia. All results are shared between partners and summary results are shared with the entire research community after a 12-month embargo period. This open and broad distribution means that the FinnGen findings can be used to promote biomedical research and R&D all over the world.
Results and tools
Results
FinnGen's core analyst team provides a comprehensive set of genome-wide analysis results in both downloadable and easily, interactively browsable formats for all partners - and subsequently to the entire research community. Results are available in the PheWeb browser, which includes GWAS results from about 2500 disease endpoints, meta-analysis results, fine-mapping data and other analysis results.
Tools
The FinnGen research project has developed a number of tools for the analysis, visualisation, and browsing of results, many of which are publicly available. FinnGen also shares the code for many of its analysis pipelines and the tools on its public GitHub site.
Publications
More than 1500 scientific papers using FinnGen data have already been published.
