Tender opportunity: Genotyping data processing services

News – 18 November 2021
Our Future Health is engaging with providers of bioinformatics services including quality control and imputation of genotyping data. Contracts relating to these services would be expected to begin in mid-2022.

Why are genetic data important?

Our Future Health will be the UK’s largest ever health research programme, aiming to build a cohort of five million volunteers from all backgrounds and from right across the UK. Participants will be asked to complete an online questionnaire about their lifestyle and medical history and to provide a blood sample, from which DNA will be extracted and used to obtain genetic data.

The genetic data donated by our participants will be combined with lifestyle information and medical history to make new discoveries about human health and disease. Some genetic information, such as genetic risk scores and potentially genetic ancestry, may also be offered to participants if they wish to receive it and give their consent.

A bioinformatics challenge on a new scale

We will ask participants who consent to join Our Future Health to provide a blood sample from which DNA will be extracted and used to obtain genetic data. The genotyping service will, at peak, assay thousands of samples each week and return the resulting genetic data to Our Future Health for further bioinformatics processing. This will include verifying the quality of the genetic data and imputing additional genetic variants.

Genotyping data processing market engagement topics

We expect genetic data to become available from mid-2022 and are now seeking to engage market providers of bioinformatics services to define requirements and capabilities relating to:

  • a scalable pipeline for genotyping data management, including individual, variant and batch quality control, and basic ancestry and relatedness analysis
  • robust and scalable imputation of additional variants using UK-wide reference panels with diverse ancestry

We are also interested in services relating to the calculation and communication of genetic risk scores (polygenic risk scores) and potentially other genetic information. For further information, please see the linked post, Tender opportunity: Genetic risk score services.

Further details and webinar registration requirements

Our Future Health is the Contracting Authority and Akeso & Co are undertaking the procurement on our behalf.

For further details, please read the Prior Information Notice (PIN), and register your interest by email to OurFutureHealth@akesoco.com by Wednesday 1st December 2021 to be invited to the upcoming webinar on December 8th at 15.00-16.00 GMT.