“The whole world was trying to understand what was going on, but they didn’t have this resource,” said Hung, whose findings were published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine in January.
The MVP, which is run by Veterans Affairs and holds data on over 150,000 Black Americans, was crucial to her discovery. Now, thanks to Hung’s hunch and the database’s speed and reach, a pharmaceutical company is close to seeking Food and Drug Administration approval for a new drug targeting APOL1; and African Americans, long underrepresented in medical research, got some overdue helpful attention.
Established in 2011, the MVP has enrolled 903,000 contributors and is on track to reach its million-member goal next year.
In the voluntary program, veterans contribute a blood sample for DNA, permit confidential access to their medical records and fill out occasional surveys to gather information, including their family medical history, exposure to toxic chemicals while in the military, sleep and exercise habits, and mood.
The broad goal is to speed development of “personalized medicine,” or individualized and preventive health strategies, said Sumitra Muralidhar, the MVP’s director. “I get goose bumps when I think about it,” she added. “We’re making a dent.”
“The MVP is probably the most useful biobank worldwide,” said Joel Gelernter, a professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine. Gelernter has collaborated with other researchers on more than a dozen papers based on the MVP, including a recent study of the biological underpinnings of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. He said the biobank has been particularly helpful for investigating PTSD and misuse of substances such as opioids and alcohol, both conditions that afflict more veterans than civilians.
The explosion in genetic research following the 2003 completion of the Human Genome Project has inspired several similar projects.
The All of Us program at the National Institutes of Health, launched in 2018, has also invited 1 million Americans to help build a biobank. So far, it has collected samples of blood, saliva or urine, access to medical records and data from wearable devices from more than 374,000 participants, nearly half of whom identify with a historically underrepresented racial or ethnic group. The UK Biobank, which began in 2006, has gathered data on a half-million subjects. Other large programs include Vanderbilt University’s BioVU and FinnGen in Finland.
The MVP, however, is not only the largest biobank but also the most diverse in representation, Muralidhar said.
The program has grown so quickly in part because of the built-in reach of VA, with more than 100 clinics participating. Another advantage is the altruism of its unpaid participants, Muralidhar said.
“We surveyed veterans before we launched the program and 70 percent said they would participate if asked,” she said. “They’ve expected nothing in return, and the key thing they’ve said over and over is ‘Will this help another veteran? If it does, I’m in.’ ”
Sylvester Norman, 67, a Coast Guard veteran and retired day-care worker in Nashville, said he was excited to join when he first…
Read More: A VA biobank is the largest source of genetic data on Black Americans
