The Search for a Genetic Disease Cure | Explorer

Iceland's Decode Laboratories is one of the world's leading genetic research facilities. Decode has been running large genomic studies now, in fact, for decades. They really did pioneer the standard approach, where what you do is enroll individuals into studies and make use of their existing clinical records for genomic discovery. This is now really the right way to do genomic studies.

Led by founder Kari Stefansson, Decode has been steadily collecting Icelandic DNA. To date, they've run a must a hundred and fifty thousand samples. So we've got half the population to give samples. However, you actually got some examples. We have made some systematic efforts now undone, but mostly this has been trickling in over 20 years. It's amazing to see all these samples in one place; each one is essentially the fundamental blueprint of an individual Icelander.

This is the concentrated DNA of a person, and it looks like a little bit approached. I mean, yes, in these little white pads that you see, there is enough information to make command. I mean, this is the sort of seek—the secrets of life are held within this.

But Decode isn't simply interested in archiving Icelandic DNA. They want to provide insights for curing genetic diseases. If you remember, many Icelanders are related, and in fact, their DNA is incredibly similar. It’s this similarity that Decode is harnessing. A population like Iceland, which is relatively more homogeneous, or that started from a modest number of founders and then grew, will make it easier to discover the role of certain genes.

Because you don't have to sequence absolutely everybody to uncover most of the genetic information. So this allows you to look for the genes which might be associated with particular diseases. Yes, because you don't have this background noise. You know, there isn't a background noise—it's less. But we are not only looking for the raw genes; we're looking for genes that protect against disease.