The 1958 Birth Cohort Biomedical Resource - Facilitating access to data and samples and enhancing future utility. (bridge funding). (360G-Wellcome-095219_Z_10_B)

This infrastructural project is targeted at strategic development of that component of the 1958 Birth Cohort(1958BC) that is known as the "Biomedical Resource". It will ensure that optimum utility can be extractedfrom the Resource during 2011-2014 and that the 1958BC will then be well placed to maintain and extend itsinternationally hailed contribution to research in the biomedical and social sciences. The proposal subsumesthree complementary objectives: (1) secure the basic infrastructure as it now exists, thus ensuring that thesuccessful systems that have already been implemented can be maintained into the future; (2) enhance theinfrastructure from an administrative and strategic management perspective to ensure that it can faceexpected and unexpected future challenges and opportunities both effectively and resiliently; (3) enhance theinfrastructure from a scientific perspective to ensure that both the 1958BC, and UK Bioscience, are bestplaced to face the scientific challenges of the future. The new science underpinning this application isfocused entirely on optimising and enhancing the utility of the pre-existing Biomedical Resource – theproposal contains no hypothesis-driven research and no funding is sought for additional data or samplecollection from study participants. The responsibility for strategic development of the cohort as a whole –including planning for future data sweeps - will remain with the Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS). Thisapplication reflects a considered evolution in the thinking of the funders (MRC, WT, ESRC) about strategicdevelopment of the 1958BC Biomedical Resource and of the systems and policies governing access to it.Initially, responsibility for access and strategic development lay with the Principal Investigators of theoriginal grant. But, it later became clear that if resource utility was to be optimised it should be managed anddeveloped by independent scientists and administrators. In 2008, responsibility for managing the 1958BCbiobank therefore transferred to ALSPAC laboratories at the University of Bristol under a joint grant fromMRC/WT. Then, in 2009, responsibility for oversight and strategic development of the Biomedical Resourceas a whole passed to the independent access committee chaired from the University of Leicester underanother small grant from MRC/WT. Following strategic discussions with MRC, WT and ESRC, theUniversity of Leicester and University of Bristol now outline a vision for joint management of the BiomedicalResource, to include its strategic development as an infrastructure, under a grant requesting limited - butadequate - funding to ensure sustainability.