Our aims

We are a network of clinicians, scientists, charity and industry partners working together to
unify existing disease biobanks in order to facilitate precision medicine for Immune-Mediated Inflammatory Disease (IMID).

The Immune-Mediated Inflammatory Disease Biobanks in the UK (IMID-Bio-UK) has been funded by the Medical Research Council (MR/R014191/1) to bring together eight immune-mediated inflammatory disease (IMID) cohorts / tissue biobanks into one single searchable and analysable dataset available to all bona fide researchers whether they are from academia or industrial institutions.  Initially, we will be focusing on rheumatoid arthritis (RA), systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), psoriasis, primary biliary cholangitis (PBC), autoimmune hepatitis (AIH), primary Sjögren’s syndrome and childhood arthritis known as juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA).

These resources will be made available to researchers to study IMID biology and predict drug response, using molecular markers to define common and unique mechanisms of disease progression and drug action. This will enable wider, safer use of biologics and new medicines across the IMID spectrum. By bringing together IMID samples and comparing data and clinical practice, we will optimise clinical pathways for common IMIDs, and provide much needed insight into biologic use in rarer or poorly characterised IMIDs, ultimately delivering patient benefit and health care savings.