Nightingale Health’s strategic collaboration with UK Biobank progresses: Biomarker results of additional 200,000 blood samples soon available to researchers globally

Press release, 6 June 2023 at 9:00 a.m. (EEST) 

Nightingale Health Plc (“Nightingale Health”), a technology company promoting preventative health with its proprietary health risk detection platform, announced today that the biomarker results from additional 200,000 blood samples from UK Biobank are being made accessible to researchers. This large-scale release of biomarker results further increases the use of Nightingale Health’s technology in global medical research. Currently, UK Biobank has over 30,000 registered researchers from over 90 countries. The biomarker results will be released in July 2023 through UK Biobank’s online Research Analysis Platform.

In 2021, UK Biobank made accessible to approved researchers the metabolomic biomarker values analyzed by Nightingale Health from approximately 100,000 blood samples from UK Biobank’s cohort of 500,000 UK volunteers. As an outcome of making the biomarker data available, researchers globally have already published well over 50 peer-reviewed publications, with new ones published weekly. The breadth of applications spans biomarker discovery, disease risk prediction, molecular disease mechanisms, and drug development. The focus areas include heart disease, diabetes, obesity, neurological disorders, infections, and several cancers.

Data on these additional 200,000 UK Biobank samples has been available for Nightingale Health and its collaborators before the forthcoming release. One such collaborator is the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, a research organization that convenes a community of researchers from across many disciplines and partner institutions–MIT, Harvard, and Harvard-affiliated hospitals. Scientists from the Broad Institute are using the data to investigate sub-types of type 2 diabetes which may have different responses to treatment. As part of the work, the scientists have replicated findings from the initial biomarker results from 100,000 blood samples to the new set of results from 200,000 blood samples.

Nightingale Health’s technology has been used in population studies and large biobanks for several years with the number of samples analyzed totaling close to 2 million. The results analyzed from each blood sample include 250 biomarkers, of which 39 are clinically validated and can be used in the same way as traditional clinical biomarkers.

Nightingale Health’s bold approach of analyzing all of UK Biobank’s half a million samples allows the company to better serve medical researchers globally. Additionally, it highlights Nightingale Health’s positive impact on society since the analysis results provided by the company are used by researchers to study and create more knowledge of diseases that put the most significant strain on society, such as cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes.

The approach also paves the way for innovative clinical applications using the company’s proprietary technology, which can potentially help prevent and treat diseases for individuals and benefit the entire healthcare system.

For further information, please contact:

Teemu Suna, CEO
ir@nightingalehealth.com

About Nightingale Health

Nightingale Health is The Preventative Health Company. Staying healthy is one of the top priorities in human life. Our health has a profound impact on our quality of life, and it’s also strongly connected to the lives of those close to us. Nightingale Health enables prevention by combining the power of our in-house developed, advanced blood analysis technology with unprecedented access to global health repositories and world-leading medical research. With this combination, we go beyond the traditional healthcare and wellbeing tools: We provide the scientific connection to multiple health and disease outcomes and the ability to predict future healthy years.

Nightingale Health operates globally with a parent company in Finland and seven subsidiaries in countries such as Japan, the United States, Singapore, and the United Kingdom. Nightingale Health has customers in more than 25 countries in the healthcare and medical research sectors. The company’s technology is being used in many of the world’s leading health initiatives, such as the UK Biobank, and over 450 peer-reviewed publications validate the technology. The company’s Series B shares are listed on the First North Growth Market Finland marketplace. Read more: https://nightingalehealth.com

About UK Biobank

UK Biobank is a large-scale biomedical database and research resource containing genetic, lifestyle and health information from half a million UK participants. UK Biobank’s database, which includes blood samples, heart and brain scans and genetic data of the 500,000 volunteer participants, is globally accessible to approved researchers who are undertaking health-related research that’s in the public interest.

UK Biobank recruited 500,000 people aged between 40-69 years in 2006-2010 from across the UK. With their consent, they provided detailed information about their lifestyle, physical measures and had blood, urine and saliva samples collected and stored for future analysis.

UK Biobank’s research resource is a major contributor in the advancement of modern medicine and treatment, enabling better understanding of the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of a wide range of serious and life-threatening illnesses – including cancer, heart diseases and stroke. Over 30,000 researchers from more than 90 countries use UK Biobank and more than 7,000 peer-reviewed papers have been published as a result.

UK Biobank is supported by Wellcome and the Medical Research Council, as well as the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK and NIHR. The organisation has over 220 dedicated members of staff, based in multiple locations across the UK.

You can find out more about UK Biobank at http://www.ukbiobank.ac.uk  

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