Development of common disorders involves a complex interplay of multiple factors. We may assume that many genes and many environmental factors are involved. Future gene–environmental cohort studies will no longer focus on single-gene abnormalities or major environmental risk factors, such as smoking in the case of lung cancer, which have been studied to date; rather, they will concentrate on the identification of risk factors that have not been discovered by conventional epidemiological methodologies.1 Such risk factors preclude precise predictions because they will be revealed only after detailed analyses of the interactions among multiple factors—between genes and environmental factors, or among genes, for example. We may reasonably expect that combinations of these factors have an important role in the occurrence of a variety of common diseases, such as cancer, diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular diseases. These represent reasons why contemporary genomic cohort studies require the extensive collection of environmental and genetic information on a population level rather than from patients with specific disorders. Such a study design will enable researchers to formulate and test as many hypotheses as they can formulate. Launching a contemporary genomic cohort study requires enormous resources. Developed countries are investing in full-scale efforts to launch studies with cohorts comprising hundreds of thousands of local participants to meet the research objectives mentioned above. Such endeavors, such as the ongoing United Kingdom Biobank with 5 00 000 volunteers to date and the prospective cohort studies being planned in the United States, are termed ‘biobank’ projects.1 In Japan, it is an urgent task to build a contemporary gene–environmental cohort.

Yamagata University, with its long history of and experience with traditional cohort research projects that started some 30 years ago,2, 3 started Yamagata Molecular Epidemiological Cohort Study, when its Global Center of Excellence (G-COE) program entitled ‘Formation of an International Network for Education and Research of Molecular Epidemiology’ (2008–2012) was approved by the Japanese Government. The summary of our study was shown Table 1. As of March 2012, 9000 participants (72.6% of the health check-up examinees; 3589 men and 5411 women; median age at baseline 64 years) donated their DNA to the study. Basically, the same study platform is shared with the Japan Multi-institutional Collaborative Cohort Study (J-MICC Study).4

Table 1 Summary of the study
Full size table

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