The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) BioResource is a resource of over 100,000 volunteers, both with and without health conditions, who are willing to be approached to take part in research studies.
Headquartered in Cambridge, there are eight NIHR BioResources located round the country including, Cambridge, Leicester, London, Newcastle and Oxford.
The NIHR BioResource can provide researchers with volunteers tailor made to their research study. The NIHR BioResource holds genotyping and phenotyping information on all its volunteers. Each volunteer has provided a blood or saliva sample and completed a health questionnaire to match them to relevant studies.
The NIHR BioResource speeds up the process of the study recruitment by targeting specific cohorts of people based on the data, samples and health-related information provided and according to study criteria provided by researchers. Suitable study volunteers will then be invited to take part, therefore, greatly reducing recruitment time and aiding the smooth running of the study.
The NIHR BioResource has the capacity to support more studies and is looking for eligible research projects to sign up and use their service. Nathalie Kingston, Operational Director of the NIHR BioResource said: “Research teams supported by the NIHR BioResource are able to access large numbers of well characterised individuals. This can particularly help with the study of rare variants where identifying and recruiting particular groups of volunteers and patients can take time. We are now looking for more studies to be submitted and use our panel. Our volunteers have already taken part in a number of major studies researching a wide range of disease areas.”
Applications are considered for studies looking to recruit participants based on their genotype and/or phenotype and will be reviewed by the NIHR BioResource Scientific Advisory Board. If approved, the BioResource will work with the research team to ensure that the ethics submission and volunteer paperwork are in line with recruitment via the BioResource before screening their extensive database and inviting eligible volunteers to take part in the study.
For more information about the NIHR BioResource, visit their website https://bioresource.nihr.ac.uk/ or email nbr@bioresource.nihr.ac.uk.
What are you waiting for? Let the BioResource be the tool to your discovery.