The Taiwan Biobank – With the advancement in the biomedical research and the completion of the human genome sequencing, medical geneticists and genetic epidemiologists are now able to provide biomedical researchers with a wider variety of disease information than ever before, further aiding researchers in more in-depth researches on disease-causing mechanisms. Numerous countries have already begun active participation in the construction of their own biobanks with the goal of creating a large population-based cohort database, allowing combination of genetics, epidemiology and other medical information to explore disease etiology. Given unique features of riskfactors profiles and genetic background, it is therefore highly beneficial for Taiwan to construct a biobank specific for the Taiwanese population, as it would enable large scale cohort studies to be carried out for common diseases occurring locally in Taiwan.

There are several unique features characterizing the biobank in Taiwan (a) As compared to the people in Western societies, the genetic background of Taiwanese population is relatively homogenous, and thus, Taiwanese population has certain advantages for studying the effects of subtle genetic variations, such as genotypic polymorphisms. (b) The people in Taiwan live in Western style, but have remained of Eastern tradition. (c) We focus on exploring the causes of common chronic diseases occurring in the middle-aged participants, and putative gene~gene/gene-environment interactions in determining risk will be intensively addressed. (d) We will recruit our study participants based on randomly sampling scheme (not volunteers). (e) Currently, this is a research-oriented, government-funded and non-for-profit project.

The specific aims of Taiwan Biobank are (a) to understand descriptive epidemiological features and to obtain background risk profiles of common diseases in Taiwan. (b) to explore gene-risk factor/gene-gene interactions associated with common diseases in Taiwan. (c) to establish essential bioinformatic networks of Biobanks, leading to the development of Bio-IT industry. (d) to explore critical issues related to ethnic, legal, and social issues of genomic medicine in Taiwan.