Researchers at the Marshfield Clinic in rural northern Wisconsin drew the initial blood samples last week in a project to establish the first US gene bank. Similar to an effort begun in Iceland in the 1990s, the Marshfield project is intended to gather data for basic linkage analysis and eventually for the purpose of offering personalized medicine.

The clinic serves 400,000 patients and Marshfield researchers hope in the next 18 months to gather data from 40,000 individuals, and eventually to obtain samples from 80,000 patients. While the local population lacks the extreme homogeneity of Iceland's long-established island population, the Wisconsin patients are a stable and relatively homogeneous group, mostly of central and northern European background, according to Catherine McCarty, co-principal investigator in the Personalized Medicine Research Project. "It is nearly half Germanic," she said.

The clinic's patient pool is also extremely stable with only three percent turnover annually, added Michael Caldwell, co-principal investigator. "It's a population on which we have very extensive and well-integrated information in an electronic form, and have had for quite a number of years," he said.

"I think [the Marshfield project] complements very nicely what we have been doing for six years," said Kari Stefansson, CEO of Reykjavik-based deCode Genetics, which is carrying out the massive genetic study of Icelanders. "It validates the enterprise we started and I am pleased to hear it is in the hands of outstanding people in Wisconsin," Stefansson told The Scientist. The company has genetic data on some 80,000 Icelanders so far, and plans to gather information on 200,000 individuals among Iceland's total population of approximately 280,000.

Both Stefansson and Caldwell noted that because the Marshfield population is more heterogeneous than Iceland's it will not be as easy to use the data to find associations between polymorphisms and disease. But Stefansson said that the population variation does offer an advantage in the possibility of doing genome-wide association studies.

"It'll be necessary to collaborate with others that have a population with different ethnic backgrounds to be able to look at the universality of our findings," said McCarty, adding that he would like to see similar research done with populations of Hispanic, Asian, and other ethnic origins.

Such projects are in planning stages for the United Kingdom and Estonia, according to McCarty and Caldwell. And while the Marshfield project will provide basic research insights, it is unusual in that it was initiated by clinic doctors with the goal of providing personalized medicine and will not rely heavily on federal funding.

The $4 million Marshfield project is supported by grants from the state of Wisconsin and the private Marshfield Medical Research Foundation. A grant of $847,000 from the US Health Resources and Services Administration was devoted to studying ethics and protection of study participants' privacy.

Focus groups of potential study subjects vetoed the idea of making research results available on the Internet, according to McCarty. So the Marshfield results will be made publicly available, he explained, however researchers will have to travel to Wisconsin to use them.