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Read about what’s new with the Biobank, what we’re doing and how you can become involved.
Participant Profile
Over 100,000 people have joined the Biobank and we’ve collected over 50,000 samples! Our participants represent a diverse group from across the entire UCHealth system.
One size does NOT fit all.
That’s why sometimes the same medical treatment may work for one person, but not for another. Every one of us is different; but we don’t yet know enough about those differences to fully understand how they affect our health or cause us to have diseases.
The Colorado Center for Personalized Medicine (CCPM) is hard at work carrying out research into how differences among people influence health and disease. However, we need your help.
At the heart of our research efforts is the CCPM Biobank where we collect, store, process, and test biological samples. The samples and information about the people who donate the samples are used for research and clinical genetic testing. These clinical genetic test results may be helpful to you and your health care providers.
We are asking patients at UCHealth and people in the community to be part of the Biobank. If you decide to take part, we will take a blood sample from you next time you have blood draw in one of our UCHealth clinics. We also look at your health information found in your medical record.
About the Biobank
Why be part of the Biobank?
We aim to make research studies available to everyone, not just those with certain conditions or diseases. Common diseases and treatments need more research, and for that, we need you to take part and to donate your unique sample—and thousands of others—to continue to make discoveries that will help us understand why some people get diseases and why some treatments work well for certain people.
The more samples we collect, the more discoveries we can make that we hope will lead to improvements in healthcare delivery. By being part of this important research, you can help us make discoveries that could lead to more personalized medicine.
The Biobank is also able to return some clinical genetic test results to participants. These clinical genetic test results may be helpful to you and your healthcare providers. Some types of results may be returned directly to your medical record, and for others, you may be contacted first. The information may include:
- Results that may predict how you respond to medications
- Results that may predict your risk of certain diseases
- Results that may identify you as a carrier for a disease
For more information about results, please visit our Return of Results page.
How it works
It’s easy and convenient to be part of the Biobank. You just need to read and sign a consent form. You can access this form by signing on to your My Health Connection account. If you do not have an account yet, you can create an account by clicking here. If you consent to participate, we will collect a blood sample from you the next time you have blood drawn at any UCHealth clinic.
To take part you must be aged 18 or over and be able to consent for yourself in either English or Spanish. You must also be a patient at UCHealth.
Frequently Asked Questions
We are recruiting and collecting samples from patients at UCHealth hospitals and clinics to learn how differences between people can affect health and disease. Learning more about this could, in the future, help us make discoveries that could improve healthcare for everyone.
This is a research program so the benefit is to help researchers understand how differences among people, such as in their genetic information, affect health, and risk of disease.
When we analyze your sample, we may learn something that is medically relevant for you. If we believe that the information is of medical importance, we will ask your permission to share this information with you. We cannot guarantee that we will find such information to give to you.
In the future, we also hope to be able to return information on your genetic ancestry, if you want it.
We take a blood sample from you so that we can extract the DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) from it. DNA is how people store information we inherit from our parents; that information directs how we grow and develop. The DNA information is contained in pieces, called genes. We analyze the DNA to understand how peoples’ genetic information differs. We also store some of the sample for future research. We hope to make new discoveries that will improve our understanding of disease and lead to new diagnoses and treatments.
There are three ways we could collect a blood sample from you. We may use a leftover sample from a clinical test, we may get an additional tube when your physician orders a clinical test, or we may ask you for a research specific sample.
Research can take a long time; therefore, we cannot guarantee that we will find information in your sample to return to you. As more samples are processed and genotyping is completed, the Biobank may find information that is medically important for some participants. This information is about genetic variations or changes in DNA that may affect how a person reacts to certain types of medications or that may increase risk of certain diseases, such as cancer or heart disease. For many of these diseases, there are medical options to reduce risk or manage the effects of disease.
If we learn something about your sample, such as information on your risk of certain diseases or health conditions, how you may respond to medications or your risk of being a carrier of certain diseases, we may be able to return this to you. We will ask your permission first before returning any information to you. However, not everyone will have this information, so we cannot guarantee that everyone will receive results
If you have further questions about this study, please call the Biobank at 303-724-9944 or email us at CCPM-Biobank@ucdenver.edu. You can also reach out to us using the contact form on this website.
If you have questions about your rights as a research subject or the conduct of this study, please contact the Colorado Multiple Institutional Review Board (COMIRB) at 303-724-1055.