A Biorepository for Coronary Heart Disease in Qatar

Coronary heart disease (CHD) poses a major health burden in the Gulf countries. It is the leading cause of mortality and morbidity in the world and poses an enormous societal burden in the Gulf countries. Early detection of disease is imperative to reduce the health care burden and financial costs associated with CHD. Knowledge of novel genetic and proteomic markers of CHD will provide more precise estimates of risk while defining the pathways important in individual patients, revealing new targets for intervention, and ultimately enabling an individualized approach to care. To translate recent advances in genomics and proteomics into clinical practice, these newly discovered biomarkers will need to be evaluated in patients of diverse ethnic groups with varying characteristics, environmental factors, and medication use. The investigators propose to establish a biorepository of plasma and Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) linked to demographic and clinical variables to facilitate biomarker studies of CHD risk, progression, and outcome. The overarching goal in developing the Qatar Cardiovascular Biorepository (QCBio) is to create a resource that fosters research aimed at identifying novel biochemical and genetic markers of CHD. A biorepository with linkage to clinical data will also provide an invaluable resource for cardiovascular research, including genomic and proteomic studies of CHD and development of biomarkers for early detection of disease and personalized drug therapy (pharmacogenetics and pharmacoproteomics).