trishrhymes
Senior Member
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I'm not sure whether this has already been covered, so forgive me if I'm agitating unnecessarily! I have been trying to get my head around how much MEGA is likely to cost, and none of the figures make sense, mainly because I have too little information. Here goes anyway. Please chip in with correct figures, I'm sure mine must be wrong.
The British ME/CFS biobank set up recently has cost more than £1million (?). It currently has samples and information on 300 ME/CFS patients and 200 controls. Let's call that £2000 per patient to check diagnosis, collect samples and questionnaires, store, maintain, staff, house and pay running costs for the biobank, etc.
The MEGA study wants to study 12000 people (patients and controls). The first stage is setting up a biobank.
This might therefore cost more than £24 million.
The aim is to ask for initial funding to set up the biobank of, say, £6 million, which would be about £500 per patient. Perhaps economies of scale?
This stage would not involve any testing of the samples, simply provide a resource for future studies.
The next stage would be genomics, proteomics, metabolomics and lots of other stuff.
Lets just start with genomics, which seems to be the indicated starting point. A whole genome individual analysis currently costs about £1000 per person. So that's another £12 million just to get the data. Let's assume another £1 million to do the detailed analysis, subgrouping, comparison with phenotype etc., so that's £13 million.
A wide ranging plasma metabolomic study like Naviaux has done is about £1000 per person, so, including analysis, that's another £13 million.
If we want to include a much wider range of data, lets look at The Open Medicine foundation in depth study of severely ill patients (Ron Davis), which is costing about $20,000 per patient. Call this £16,000 per person.
Multiply this by 12000, gives close to £200 million.
Whichever way I look at it, I can't seem to square the circle.
My conclusion is that the aim of the project is to spend all the ME research funding for the next decade just setting up the biobank.
Alternative proposal:
Given that there is already a good biobank with hundreds of samples, I'd much rather see the proposed MEGA second stage research (all those -omics projects) started on that material now. In my opinion that's where the £6 million I've hypothesised above should be spent. All those great biomed experts listed by MEGA could start as soon as that funding is in place, not wait the years it will take to get the MEGA biobank set up.
What think you?
The British ME/CFS biobank set up recently has cost more than £1million (?). It currently has samples and information on 300 ME/CFS patients and 200 controls. Let's call that £2000 per patient to check diagnosis, collect samples and questionnaires, store, maintain, staff, house and pay running costs for the biobank, etc.
The MEGA study wants to study 12000 people (patients and controls). The first stage is setting up a biobank.
This might therefore cost more than £24 million.
The aim is to ask for initial funding to set up the biobank of, say, £6 million, which would be about £500 per patient. Perhaps economies of scale?
This stage would not involve any testing of the samples, simply provide a resource for future studies.
The next stage would be genomics, proteomics, metabolomics and lots of other stuff.
Lets just start with genomics, which seems to be the indicated starting point. A whole genome individual analysis currently costs about £1000 per person. So that's another £12 million just to get the data. Let's assume another £1 million to do the detailed analysis, subgrouping, comparison with phenotype etc., so that's £13 million.
A wide ranging plasma metabolomic study like Naviaux has done is about £1000 per person, so, including analysis, that's another £13 million.
If we want to include a much wider range of data, lets look at The Open Medicine foundation in depth study of severely ill patients (Ron Davis), which is costing about $20,000 per patient. Call this £16,000 per person.
Multiply this by 12000, gives close to £200 million.
Whichever way I look at it, I can't seem to square the circle.
My conclusion is that the aim of the project is to spend all the ME research funding for the next decade just setting up the biobank.
Alternative proposal:
Given that there is already a good biobank with hundreds of samples, I'd much rather see the proposed MEGA second stage research (all those -omics projects) started on that material now. In my opinion that's where the £6 million I've hypothesised above should be spent. All those great biomed experts listed by MEGA could start as soon as that funding is in place, not wait the years it will take to get the MEGA biobank set up.
What think you?
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