Estonian Genome Project Foundation (EGPF)

The Estonian Genome Project Foundation (EGPF) is a non-profit organization founded by the Government of the Republic of Estonia in 2001. The EGPF carries out the Estonian Genome Project (EGP) with the goal to create a database of health, genealogy and genome data that would comprise a large part of the Estonian population. The database will make it possible to carry out research both in Estonia and outside to find links between genes, environmental factors and common diseases (cancer, diabetes, depression, cardio-vascular diseases, etc) and to apply the information gained from research in making new discoveries in genomics and epidemiology, which eventually lead to increasing the efficiency of health care. The first tissue samples were taken from gene donors in October 2002. In 2005 the gene bank containes already the data over 10,000 gene donors. With the increase of the number of gene donors to 100,000 within next four years it will be suitable for many nested case-control studies. The EGPF with its database can be a good partner both for research institutions and companies of the pharmaceutical industry. Issuance of the anonymous data of gene donors started in 2004. The legal framework for the activities of the EGP consists of the Constitution of the Republic of Estonia, the Human Genes Research Act (HGRA), the Personal Data Protection Act, the Databases Act and the Council of Europe Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine.