Biopankkitutkimukset – 2025

This project is to study the potential association between B-cell neoplasms and Puumala orthohantavirus infections. Puumala orthohantavirus can cause Nephropathia Epidemica, which is a disease associated with an increased risk for the later development of B-cell malignancies. However, most Puumalavirus infections are asymptomatic (not causing the disease) and detectable by the presence of Puumala-specific antibodies. We will screen patients with B-cell neoplasms for the presence of Puumala-specific antibodies and compare that to age-and sex-matched controls without B-cell neoplasms.

FinnGen is a 10-year study aiming to identify genetic risk factors for thousands of diseases. The third phase of the FinnGen study focuses on deeper analyses of diseases and genetic variants identified in the earlier phases without expanding the current cohort of 520,000 participants. The project will emphasize longitudinal studies of disease progression and therapeutic responses and explore the biological mechanisms of genetic signals in selected diseases. New health data and molecular profiling data will be integrated with the existing data to further boost our understanding of the biological processes underlying disease development in individuals with specific genetic variants. The aim is to study the progression of age related macular degeneration (AMD) by collecting and analyzing clinical and genetic data, OCT images and protein biomarkers. In combination, the data will improve the identification of patients with the highest risk of disease progression. This in turn could, in the future, reduce the duration of clinical trials.