Millions of samples from biobank Lifelines help you grow older more healthily

Thanks to the participation of over 160,000 participants, Lifelines stores millions of samples. As a biobank, they collect all kinds of data and body materials, such as urine, blood and hair. This data is made available to scientists and researchers. Hilde Laeremans, Team Leader Laboratory and Lifestore at Lifelines, tells more about the processing and storage of these samples.

By: Eline te Velde

Lifelines is more than a storage facility for biological material. In addition to the body materials, the participants also provide personal information by means of questionnaires. Lifelines also performs lung function tests, ECG, anthropometry and blood pressure measurements. They repeat this data collection every five years. “The goal is to understand why one person ages healthily and another does not,” says Laeremans. “Because we have so much medical data over a longer period, we can investigate which factors influence health. For example, is it stress or nutrition? Because many families participate, we can also study genetic factors.”

The biobank does not perform the analyses and research itself, but makes the data and samples available to scientists. The most important condition is that the research makes a relevant contribution to people growing old more healthily. “As a researcher, you can submit a research application. We then check whether we have the data and samples and how we make them available. But we also check whether the analytical method is correct and whether there are enough controls built in. We advise the researchers in this. Is everything in order and does the research contribute to growing old more healthily? Then we make the data and samples available.”

A web of data

As Team Leader Laboratory and Lifestore, Laeremans coordinates the collection of the material. “From the collection locations, the samples are transported to our laboratory, where we aliquot them. In addition, some of the samples go to the clinical chemistry department of the UMCG for analysis of a number of basic issues. Think of cholesterol, glucose and the blood count. Participants receive feedback on this. The samples are then processed and stored in the Hamilton, a fully automatic storage facility at -80° Celsius.”

To manage the enormous web of data, Lifelines had a unique software system built. “It took a long time, but we have a system that was built specifically for us. When you work with such a large amount of data, you can try to fit it into a standard structure of an existing system. Or you can build your own system that meets all the requirements.”

Safety

Participants provide a lot of personal data and expect this to be handled with care. Lifelines therefore has a great responsibility to ensure the safety of the samples and data. Laeremans: “The groups that work with the data use different systems. For example, they only see information that is relevant to them. For example, a doctor's assistant only sees a name and date of birth. In the lab system it is clear which sample it is, but the name is not visible.” In addition, Lifelines only uses Dutch servers to store the data and various digital and physical security measures have been built in.

Even when the samples and data are shared with researchers, no unnecessary information is shared, Laeremans explains: “If someone is doing research into the influence of smoking on the development of a tumor, you do get age, gender and whether someone smokes, but we do not provide information about the BMI or the place of residence of the participant, for example.” Furthermore, we also look at whether the research group is large enough and whether there are really no possibilities that a data point or sample can be traced back to one person.”

Research

Biobanks form the basis for much research and are therefore indispensable for developments in healthcare and science. The Lifelines data has already been used in numerous studies.

For example, research was conducted in collaboration with the RIVM into the effect of reducing the salt content in bread. “Salt is an important source of iodine and iodine is essential for the functioning of the thyroid gland. We provided urine samples to the RIVM, in which sodium and potassium were compared before and after the salt reduction. In this way, we contribute to the monitoring and evaluation of policy in social changes.”