Australia’s diverse ethnic make-up to be captured in national DNA database

DNA samples from diverse communities around Australia are being gathered to form what is hoped to be first national genetic biobank.

Daniel MacArthur at the Garvan Institute in Sydney on Thursday. He is behind Australia's first home-based DNA database, dubbed OurDNA and championed by MCRI's Sarah Murdoch. Picture: Nikki Short

It’s the great conundrum facing genetic scientists: as the world moves towards a future of preventive medicine based on DNA screening, many people risk being locked out.

Across the world, enormous DNA databases have been amassed that are already being used to analyse which common gene mutations cause a variety of diseases, but those resources are of little use to millions of Australians whose ancestry does not match the largely European cohort whose genetic information is stored.

Australian scientists are working to change that by developing the nation’s first homegrown national DNA database that will hold the genetic information of Australians from diverse ethnic backgrounds that will securely bank people’s health information, blood, and blood cells and will be available as an anonymised public database for doctors.

The OurDNA Australian Genetic Diversity Database is a joint project of the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and the Garvan Institute, and has already collected almost 300 blood samples from people of Filipino and Vietnamese ancestry in Sydney and Melb­ou­rne which is now being analysed.

The director of the Centre for Population Genomics at the Garvan Institute, Daniel MacArthur, is leading the project. He will discuss it on a panel on Friday at the SXSW Sydney conference together with MCRI professor Enzo Porello and Oxford University-based Google DeepMind researcher Clare Bycroft.

The panel, to be chaired by MCRI ambassador and child health advocate Sarah Murdoch, will discuss how advances in ­genomics, data science and therapeutics are transforming the practice of medicine by using genetic information to guide the diagnosis, prediction and treatment of disease.

“For genomic medicine to be effective for everyone, we need to ensure that all Australians are represented in genomics research,” Professor MacArthur said.

“Australia is home to one of the most diverse populations in the world, yet the representation of many Australian communities in global genetic research has been shockingly low. By changing this, the OurDNA program has the potential to transform the way we diagnose and treat rare diseases for everyone.”

Currently, much of the world’s research in genomics, including in Australia, relies on large international genetic biobanks, but with a quarter of Australians of diverse ethnic backgrounds, many risk being locked out of advances in medicine. “We don’t want to end up leaving any communities behind,” Professor MacArthur said. “We want to do everything in our power to ensure genomic medicine doesn’t exacerbate existing gaps or inequities in healthcare that exist in the community.”

The researchers aim to make the database Australia’s main biobank of genetic information.

“This is phase one, where we aim to demonstrate the model works, and if that’s the case then what we need is larger-scale funding to support phase two and beyond,” Professor MacArthur said