UK Biobank Pharma Proteomics Project

Pre-competitive consortium mapping the genetic architecture of the human plasma proteome.

The UK Biobank Pharma Proteomics Project (UKB-PPP) was a pre-competitive consortium of thirteen pharmaceutical companies and the UK Biobank, profiling ~3,000 plasma proteins using the Olink Proximity Extension Assay across 54,306 participants. The flagship analysis, published in (Sun et al., 2023), characterized protein quantitative trait loci (pQTLs), their genetic architecture, and their associations with disease outcomes, providing one of the most comprehensive maps to date of how human genetics shapes the circulating proteome.

My contributions to the flagship paper focused on fine-mapping of the pQTLs and colocalization with eQTLs to enable the consortium’s broader analyses. The UKB-PPP dataset has since become a foundational resource for Mendelian randomization, drug target validation, and multi-omics integration across the pharmaceutical industry.

Related: Translational Proteomics for Obesity Clinical Trials — applying the pQTL and proteomic methods from UKB-PPP to clinical trial data at Lilly.

References

2023

  1. Plasma proteomic associations with genetics and health in the UK Biobank
    Sun BB, Chiou J, Traylor M, and 62 more authors
    Nature, 2023
    DOI Scholar View project