Major biobank launches in America

December 17, 2008

A health-care organization based in Oakland, California, is building a biobank that could rival the world’s largest in size and scope.

The biobank will be run by the health-care provider Kaiser Permanente and has received a grant of US$8.6 million from the philanthropic Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in Princeton, New Jersey, to collect DNA specimens from 200,000 people enrolled in Kaiser’s medical-care plan. (Nature News)