Research infrastructure The European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) is one of the world's largest cohort studies and includes more than half a million (521 000) participants from ten European countries. EPIC was designed to study the association between diet, nutrition status, lifestyle, environmental factors, and the occurrence of cancer and other chronic diseases.
Parts of the Västerbotten Intervention Programme (VIP), which in turn is part of the Northern Sweden Health and Disease Study (NSHDS), is one of two Swedish sub-cohorts in EPIC .
EPIC is led by WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) based in Lyon, France. The EPIC database is stored at IARC as are the blood samples from the majority of the EPIC sub-cohorts. The samples from the Västerbotten Intervention Programme are however, stored in Umeå.
Umeå’s participation in EPIC is coordinated by the Biobank Research Unit. Usually, one or more researchers from Umeå University participate in the projects, among other things to contribute with clinical knowledge, expertise regarding the dataset, and to ensure ethical permits and other necessary agreements are in place.
Participation in the EPIC network contributes to international exchange in the Swedish research community. EPIC is one of the largest, most well-characterised biobank cohorts in the world. It is utilised by a large number of research groups and individual users with high-quality research projects.
Learn more: European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC)
