Overview of UKCTOCS Longitudinal Women’s Cohort (UKLWC)

To create an ‘open research’ platform accessible to all bona fide scientists from academia and industry for the study of common disease and delivery of precision medicine, in particular: 

• Identification of new drug targets for common conditions to enable drug development, repositioning and indication expansion 
• Discovery of novel risk prediction, screening, diagnostic and prognostic disease markers
• Secondary use of data to address a different question or develop new methodologies, e.g. to new statistical methods or biomarker/prognostic indicators

• Size: 202,280 postmenopausal women aged 50-74 years (at recruitment in 2001-5)
• Informed consent for use of samples in secondary ethically approved studies with academia and industry 
• Additional Section 251 approval
• Longitudinal follow-up: 16.3 years follow-up 
• High quality serum biorepository: All samples collected using a standardised protocol. Liquid nitrogen storage of 544,808 serum samples (10 x 500μL aliquots in straws), composed of 189,642 baseline samples (from 189,452 women) and  unique longitudinal set: 355,166 annual serial samples (median 9) (from 50,262 women)
• Samples already validated for multi-omics analysis with academic and commercial collaborators: Nested case/controls sets used for: (i) Genotyping; (ii) Proteomics (including SWATH technology); (iii) Methylation; (iv) NMR metabolomics; (v) Autoantibody profiling; (vi) ELISA-based assays (vii) Lipidomics (viii) miRNA
• Established linkage to electronic health records (2000-2020): 
  • National Cancer Registries (NHS Digital & Northern Ireland; National Cancer Intelligence Network- NCIN)
  • Hospital Episode Statistics (HES- In/Out Patient and A&E admissions; England & Wales)
  • Death Certificates (NHS Digital & Northern Ireland Death Registry)
  • MINAP (Myocardial Ischaemia National Audit Project; until 2010) 
• Large  numbers of women with incident disease events:  Example, using HES linkage alone, number of women with different common diseases

202,280 women provided a blood sample at recruitment with women randomised to the multimodal screening group (n=50,262) continuing to donate serum annually for up to 11 years from randomisation. Sample collection stopped at the end of screening in December 2011 (Menon et al, JCO 2015). Blood samples were collected in gel tubes (8 mL gel separation serum tubes; Greiner Bio-One 455071, Stonehouse, UK) at the trial centres, the bar-coded blood tubes were scanned into the data management system and transported daily at room temperature to a central laboratory (Menon et al., Lancet Oncol 2009). Samples were scanned when they were received at the central laboratory, centrifuged at 1500g for 10 min and the separated serum aliquoted into 10 x 500μL straws (Company - IMV) using a semi-automated MAPI platform (IMV). Exact times for interval to spin (median 24 hours) was recorded for each sample. The straws were stored in liquid nitrogen tanks at the central laboratory which when full were transported to a HTA licensed commercial cryofacility (Fisher Bioservices, UK until March 2018 and NIHR Biocentre since then)