Early onset Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs), including obesity, allergies, and mental ill-health in childhood, present a serious and increasing threat to lifelong health and longevity. The ORIGINS Project (ORIGINS) addresses the urgent need for multidisciplinary efforts to understand the detrimental multisystem impacts of modern environments using well-curated large-scale longitudinal biological sample collections.
ORIGINS is a prospective community birth cohort aiming to enroll 10,000 pregnant people and follow each family until the children reach 5 years of age. A key objective is to generate a comprehensive biorepository on a subgroup of 4000 families invited to contribute blood, saliva, buccal cells, urine, stool, hair, house dust, cord blood, placenta, amniotic fluid, meconium, breastmilk, and colostrum over eight-time points spanning the antenatal period and early childhood.
Handling sizeable biobank data requires a comprehensive Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS). While ORIGINS was initiated with limited data management resources, OpenSpecimen software (version 7.0, Krishagni Solutions Pvt Ltd, Pune, Maharashtra, India) was purchased and implemented in 2018. Legacy data was imported into OpenSpecimen and a significant customization process, including integration with REDCap. This integration enabled the software to manage the complex longitudinal design of ORIGINS that includes several levels of conditional logic to accommodate multiple consent levels and customized subproject sample collections.
Read this paper that explains the details of the evolving protocol of our collaborative biobanking concept. Further, they outline their future visions for local, national, and ultimately international, comparative, and collaborative opportunities to advance our understanding of early onset NCDs and the opportunities to improve health outcomes for future generations.