Resources at hand

HUNT Biobank and Databank

The HUNT resources can help customers shorten the development lead times, increase quality and thus reach regulatory milestones faster, and enter the market at a lower cost.  With respect to the cardiovascular market, this will have impact on the development of diagnostic and therapeutic products. The health economic effect will also be substantial since early diagnoses and treatment reduces the risk of heart attack and stroke. HUNT may thus make a significant difference in the important area of cardiovascular disease diagnostics and perhaps even its prevention.  

The HUNT bio-repository and data include a stable and large cohort group of CVD donors, very low on immigration and emigration as well as stable on nativity and mortality making the donors even more valuable. Every single HUNT donor is very well characterised and documented. The industry has been waiting for access to such a large and complete recourse, and now the bio-repository of quality assured samples and material collected across a representative population is available.

Regulatory approval

Regulatory approval and quality assurance demands are stricter than ever and dependable scientific documentation has an important impact on these processes. The HUNT biobank is certified according to the ISO 9001:2008 Quality Standard and HUNT Biosciences is one of few companies that can grant access to a fully certified resource of biomaterial and annotated data.

With the large number of donors, HUNT is able to provide top level scientific data and documentation in support of new indications on existing drugs. As part of this, HUNT Biosciences can also assist in setting up clinical intervention studies on very well characterised donor groups making the biobank a unique resource in the planning of such studies. This will also have impact on the regulatory approval of new indications.

HUNT–based research on cardiovascular disease

HUNT is a part of the Faculty of Medicine at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and associated with the Trondheim University Hospital. More than a 1,000 medical professionals are a part of HUNTs internal network.

The Principal Investigators at HUNT are listed below. In addition, other researchers like Solfrid Romundstad, PhD, Ane Cecilie Dale, PhD, Håvard Dahlen, PhD, Carl Platou, MD, and Oddgeir Lingaas Holmen, MD, have provided significant contributions to CVD research based on HUNT material. The HUNT researchers’ publication track on CVD based on HUNT material includes more than 100 publications.

Recently, both the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and NTNU have provided significant funding for a large HUNT based study (HUNT-MI) on the genetic predisposition for early onset of myocardial infarction (MI). The study will be carried out through 6000 exom chip analysis and a follow-up with exom sequencing of the 1000 subjects.

Principal Investigators

• Rune Wiseth, MD, PhD: Professor at the Department of Circulation and Medical Imaging, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Head of Clinic of Cardiology, Trondheim University Hospital
• Ulrik Wisløff, MSc, PhD: Professor at the Department of Circulation and Medical Imaging, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Head of K.G. Jebsen Center of Exercise in Medicine
• Lars Johan Vatten, MD, PhD: Professor of Public Health at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Senior research consultant, International Prevention Research Institute, Lyon, Visiting Scientist, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Honorary Professor, Bristol University
• Asbjørn Støylen, MD, PhD: Associate professor, Department of Circulation and Medical Imaging, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Head of the HUNT Echocardiography project, Consultant Physician in Cardiology, Trondheim University Hospital
• Jostein Holmen, MD, PhD:  Professor of Public Health at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Founder of HUNT
• Kristian Midthjell MD, PhD: Professor of Public Health at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Head of the HUNT Diabetes Project since 1982, Member of the National Board of Nutrition, Norway.
• Kristian Hveem MD, PhD:  Professor of Medicine at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Director of the HUNT biobank and the National CONOR (Cohort of Norway) biobank, Head of the Norwegian biobank infrastructure, Biobank Norway, since 2011, Director of the Danish National Biobank establishment in Copenhagen since 2010, CSO of HUNT Biosciences since 2009.

Access to other registries

Access to other registries makes it possible to follow a high number of relevant co-morbidities over time. Every patient included in the HUNT registry is identified by the unique PIN used in all Norwegian registries. They contain health records, social records, family records, work records, criminal records, etc. Pending approval from the ethics committee, we are able to link every HUNT CVD case with the Norwegian registries.

It is possible for HUNT to identify donor groups and match controls using clinical end-points registries in linkage studies. Linkage studies are of great importance as the cardiovascular diseases have several known co-morbidities noted in the linkable registries. Each HUNT donor group can be matched on the use of various medications with the prescription registries as well as links to family members, covering inherited diseases and conditions. Other important registries are the cancer and cause-of-death registries, as well as 40-50 other national quality registries and the Social services registries collected by GPs.

Together with the HUNT information, this constitutes an unprecedented resource in terms of both data and biological material available for clients studying cardiovascular disease or developing CVD-related products. Using this recourse to develop therapeutic and diagnostic products is expected to have great future impact on the management of cardiovascular disease. In addition, using supercomputers with complex system biological modelling, it is expected that HUNT data will be groundbreaking in the emerging highly computed development of new products.