A Visit with Partners in the Faroe Islands
Variant Bio has collaborations all over the world, and one of the critical lessons we have learned in forming these partnerships over the years is the importance of spending time with partners in person. I recently had the opportunity to visit our partners on the FarGen 2 project in the Faroe Islands, my second visit to the islands.
The Faroe Islands are located between Iceland and the UK:
I made the trip from Seattle via Iceland, and was able to spend a week in Tórshavn, the capital, with our partners on the study. The FarGen 2 project has two main recruitment sites, one in Tórshavn and one in Klaksvík (the largest and second largest cities in the Faroes, respectively). The Faroe Islands had a historically isolated population, and this demographic history of relative isolation combined with a recent expansion in the population (from about 5,000 individuals in the 1800s to its current population of ~53,000) have created the opportunity for rare variants to rise to higher frequencies than would be seen in other groups. This kind of population history is exactly the kind of unique genetic background that Variant Bio looks for in our projects, so we are very excited to work with the FarGen 2 project in their efforts to recruit 3,500 Faroese participants.
While the Faroes have undergone a rapid population expansion, the country is still extremely small. In practice, this means that communities are quite close knit, and that if you grew up in the Faroes, it’s hard to leave your house without seeing someone you know. It also helps simplify some of the communication about the project. While I was visiting and interacting with people, almost everyone had heard of the FarGen study, and many people had participated in the study, or knew the project leader, Dr. Noomi Gregersen.
Having the opportunity to interact with members of the community was a reminder of the importance of studies like this to the people who partake in them. People had a lot of pride in the fact that this project was studying the health of the Faroese people, and were very curious about the future outcomes of the study. We are lucky to work with collaborators on this project who are part of the community themselves, and can communicate results from the study to participants. Dr. Gregersen and others on her team have done a lot of community outreach to provide updates on the study progress, and to connect with organizations that support individuals with specific diseases, like IBD and diabetes, that the FarGen project hopes to provide a deeper understanding of by identifying novel, genetically validated targets.
In addition to contributing to knowledge about the health of the Faroese community, importantly the FarGen project is helping build capacity for local genomic research in the Faroes. Benefit-sharing funds for this project supported the generation of the first whole genome sequencing of Faroese DNA. This sequencing was performed in the Faroe Islands themselves, helping ensure that local scientists have access to advanced sequencing methods. We will use the data generated from this sequencing to better understand the population history of the Faroe Islands, and have created a foundational dataset that will inform analysis for the next phase of the FarGen project.
The FarGen study also provides direct health benefits to participants. Everyone who participates in the study receives the results of the bloodwork panel that is conducted to provide general health information that will eventually help inform the analysis of the genetic data. A FarGen team member reviews the results for every participant, and any lab work that is outside of normal ranges is reviewed by a physician associated with the project (Bjarni á Steig). Additionally, data collected through the FarGen project is intended to help inform public health approaches in the Faroe Islands; the study team recently wrote a paper on the levels of vitamin D in the Faroese population, which could impact future public health interventions for this critical nutrient.
While in the Faroes, I had the opportunity to observe recruitment at the study site in Klaksvík. It was incredible to see the efficiency of the team in enrolling participants; the study has already recruited over 2,800 participants, and has fewer than 700 additional participants remaining to recruit. We were able to review some of the data that has been collected already, and had the opportunity to brainstorm and plan for the recruitment of final participants in the study. It was fun to celebrate the success of the team during the visit, and consider the amazing amount of data that has already been generated as part of the study. Our hope is that this data and the unique health-related traits of the Faroese people will lead to the identification of novel targets for drug discovery, especially in the space of inflammatory conditions, such as inflammatory bowel disease. I also had the opportunity to meet with members of the FarGen team, and meet with some of the external collaborators on the project, including doctors at the newly launched Faroe Islands Steno Center. There was also time for some social visiting. Noomi’s family raises sheep, and my visit happened to coincide with lamb season in the Faroes. As an unexpected perk of the trip, I had the opportunity to visit the sheep, and see a lamb that was only a couple of hours old!
