Waltham Petcare Science Institute, Waltham On the Wolds, Leicestershire, UK.
VCA Clinical Studies, 12401 West Olympic Blvd, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
BMC Vet Res. 2023 Aug 17;19(1):125. doi: 10.1186/s12917-023-03691-4.
The veterinary care of cats and dogs is increasingly embracing innovations first applied to human health, including an increased emphasis on preventative care and precision medicine. Large scale human population biobanks have advanced research in these areas; however, few have been established in veterinary medicine. The MARS PETCARE BIOBANK™ (MPB) is a prospective study that aims to build a longitudinal bank of biological samples, with paired medical and lifestyle data, from 20,000 initially healthy cats and dogs (10,000 / species), recruited through veterinary hospitals over a ten-year period. Here, we describe the MPB protocol and discuss its potential as a platform to increase understanding of why and how diseases develop and how to advance personalised veterinary healthcare.
At regular intervals, extensive diet, health and lifestyle information, electronic medical records, clinicopathology and activity data are collected, genotypes, whole genome sequences and faecal metagenomes analysed, and blood, plasma, serum, and faecal samples stored for future research.
Proposed areas for research include the early detection and progression of age-related disease, risk factors for common conditions, the influence of the microbiome on health and disease and, through genome wide association studies, the identification of candidate loci for disease associated genetic variants. Genomic data will be open access and research proposals for access to data and samples will be considered. Over the coming years, the MPB will provide the longitudinal data and systematically collected biological samples required to generate important insights into companion animal health, identifying biomarkers of disease, supporting earlier identification of risk, and enabling individually tailored interventions to manage disease.
猫和狗的兽医护理越来越多地采用最初应用于人类健康的创新技术，包括更加重视预防保健和精准医学。大规模的人类群体生物库推动了这些领域的研究；然而，兽医医学中很少有建立这种生物库。MARS PETCARE BIOBANK™（MPB）是一项前瞻性研究，旨在建立一个 20,000 只最初健康的猫和狗（10,000/种）的生物样本纵向库，通过兽医医院在十年内招募，这些样本与配对的医疗和生活方式数据相关联。在这里，我们描述了 MPB 方案，并讨论了它作为一个平台的潜力，以增加对疾病发生原因和方式的理解，以及如何推进个性化兽医医疗保健。
定期收集广泛的饮食、健康和生活方式信息、电子病历、临床病理和活动数据，分析基因型、全基因组序列和粪便宏基因组，并储存血液、血浆、血清和粪便样本以备将来研究。
拟议的研究领域包括与年龄相关疾病的早期检测和进展、常见疾病的风险因素、微生物组对健康和疾病的影响，以及通过全基因组关联研究，确定与疾病相关遗传变异的候选基因座。基因组数据将开放获取，并将考虑研究访问数据和样本的提案。在未来几年，MPB 将提供所需的纵向数据和系统收集的生物样本，以深入了解伴侣动物健康，识别疾病的生物标志物，支持更早地识别风险，并实现针对个体的疾病管理干预措施。
