Dr. Jitendra Singh Inaugurates ‘National Biobank’ and India’s own Longitudinal Population Data study

Newdelhi:6/7/25:Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Science & Technology and Vice President of CSIR, Dr. Jitendra Singh, inaugurated the state-of-the-art Phenome India “National Biobank” at the CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB) in the capital today.

The newly launched facility marks a significant stride towards building India’s longitudinal health database and enabling personalised treatment regimens in future.

The Biobank will serve as the backbone of a nationwide cohort study, collecting comprehensive genomic, lifestyle, and clinical data from 10,000 individuals across India. Drawing inspiration from the UK Biobank model, the Indian version is tailored to capture the country’s unique diversity—across geography, ethnicity, and socio-economic backgrounds. Researchers believe the initiative will aid early diagnosis, improve therapeutic targeting, and bolster the fight against complex diseases such as diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular ailments, and rare genetic disorders.

Dr. N. Kalaiselvi, Director General of CSIR and Secretary, DSIR, commended the launch of the Biobank as a bold step toward India’s self-reliance in healthcare data. Describing the initiative as a “baby step” with the potential to evolve into a global benchmark, she noted that the diversity and depth of the Indian cohort data could one day rival or even surpass global counterparts like the UK Biobank. Speaking at the occasion, Dr. Souvik Maiti, Director of CSIR-IGIB, reflected on the institute’s pioneering role in genomics over the past two decades. “We were the first institute in India to begin decoding the human genome at a time when sequencing tools were practically non-existent,” he said.