University College London - Edinburgh-Bristol (UCLEB) multi-omics consortium

The UCLEB consortium brings together well established prospective observational studies comprising over 30000 individuals from across the UK to interrogate genetic and biomarker associations underlying cardiovascular and other diseases. Participating studies include: Whitehall-II (WHII), British Regional Heart Study (BRHS), English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), MRC National Survey of Health and Development (MRC NSHD), 1958 Birth Cohort (1958BC), Edinburgh Artery Study (EAS), Edinburgh Type 2 Diabetes Study (ET2DS), Edinburgh Heart Disease Prevention Study (EHDPS), the Aspirin for Asymptomatic Atherosclerosis Trial (AAAT), Caerphilly Prospective Study (CaPS), the British Women's Heart and Health Study (BWHHS), Southall and Brent Revisited (SABRE) and a subset of the UK Longitudinal Women's Cohort. The consortium enables research into the genomic and other determinants of disease using a range of genotyping panels (Cardiochip, n=8000; Metabochip, n=20,000; and the Infinium Human Core DrugDev array, n=20,000), as well as the Nightingale NMR metabolomics platform (>200 lipidomic and metabolomic measures) and the Somalogic Proteomics platform (>5000 circulating proteins)

Genotypes are currently imputed to the Haplotype Reference Consortium panel (HRC) providing a rich source of genetic variants used in Mendelian Randomisation and Drug Target Validation pipelines. The genotyping arrays have overlapping SNP content providing extensive and dense coverage of key areas of the human genome.

These data are complemented by a wide range of survey data collected by each study over several years including clinical surveys with a range of individually assayed biomarkers, as well as measures of cognitive, respiratory, cardiac, and renal function. There is also linkage to NHS health outcomes.

Data is hosted at UCL on the secure, access restricted servers with sensitive identifiable data on the UCL ISO27001 Data Safe Haven.

Individual cohort studies maintain independent data governance and ethics for core data. Data Access for UCLEB consortium data is granted via application to the UCLEB Steering group indicating which studies and datasets are required for proposed research. In some instances a further application to the individual study is required for bespoke datasets.