On Apr. 16, 2020, Biogen, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and Partners HealthCare announced a consortium that will build and share a COVID-19 biobank. The biobank will help scientists study a large collection of de-identified biological and medical data to advance knowledge and search for potential vaccines and treatments. Biogen will help employees who wish to volunteer connect with the project. The volunteers are among the first people in Massachusetts to be diagnosed with and recover from COVID-19, as well as close contacts of those individuals, including people who were not tested or who may not have had symptoms.

According to researchers, this unique, clustered group of patients with a common exposure will offer a valuable lens into why some people show signs of disease and others are asymptomatic. It may also shed light on why among those with symptoms, some have more severe symptoms than others. Researchers will also examine blood samples from recovered patients to evaluate the levels of neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 and other aspects of their immune profile, which may point the way toward short- and long-term therapeutic options.

Biogen employees who contracted and have recovered from COVID-19, as well as people identified as close contacts of those individuals — regardless of whether they were confirmed as having COVID-19 — are eligible to participate. Partners HealthCare, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital are coordinating the outreach and sample collection effort.

Data from blood samples will be generated at the Broad Institute, and de-identified. The biobank will then provide a unique, anonymous medical and biological data set that has the potential to shed light on the biology of the virus and illuminate potential pathways for vaccines, treatments, and other breakthroughs. The biobank will also store frozen samples, which may inform future research with appropriate patient consent. Biogen will have the same level of access to the biobank as researchers around the world, which means it will not have access to identifiable information, nor will the company know which employees and close contacts volunteered to participate.

The collaboration began when several Biogen employees, still recovering from COVID-19, began to consider ways they could contribute their own medical information to research efforts underway at Biogen and beyond. Biogen leaders reached out to several partners in the hospital and biomedical community, including Deborah Hung, a core faculty member of the Broad Institute where she serves as the co-director of the Infectious Disease and Microbiome Program, and a professor in the Departments of Genetics and Medicine at Harvard Medical School in the Divisions of Infectious Disease and Pulmonary and Critical Care and Department of Molecular Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital.