Country: Finland

Launched in 2017, FinnGen is a wide public–private partnership coordinated by the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM) at the University of Helsinki. Leveraging Finland’s unique founder population and nationwide electronic health registers, FinnGen has now generated genome-wide data for more than 500 000 Finnish biobank participants (~10 % of the population) and linked these to >2 500 meticulously curated longitudinal disease endpoints. The combination of a semi-isolated population history, severe historical bottlenecks and rapid recent expansion enriches rare, high-impact alleles, allowing FinnGen to detect gene–disease associations with significantly fewer carriers than required in more heterogeneous cohorts and to provide rapid human-genetics validation for therapeutic targets. Published analyses have already revealed coding-variant effects across common and rare diseases, underscoring the power of this resource for both disease-mechanism discovery and drug-development pipelines. In addition to the health register data, FinnGen has recently included extensive laboratory measurement data collected on most of the FinnGen participants into national electronic health records from 2014 onward. The data have been harmonised and adapted to international standards to facilitate the straightforward use of the data in research. The latest public data freeze contains 21.3 million imputed variants and is fully accessible, free of charge, to researchers worldwide via online tools such as FinnGen PheWeb, Risteys portal and direct Google Cloud downloads after a simple webform. FinnGen is now expanding toward integrated proteomic, single-cell and other omic layers (FinnGen 3, 2023–2027) while maintaining annual freezes; the open dataset available to the community will therefore continue to grow. During the following years, the project will continue its search for genetic clues to disease progression and explore the biological mechanism of the genetic signals uncovered in the first stages of the project. While disease-specific studies often provide deeper phenotyping for individual conditions, FinnGen’s harmonized longitudinal data enables unprecedented insights across the full spectrum of health and disease. We continue to work with partners worldwide to develop new methodologies and demonstrate novel analyses possible with this rich data resource. Visit our booth at ASHG 2025 to explore how FinnGen’s harmonised genomic and registry framework can accelerate your research—from population genetics to target prioritisation—and join the thousands of researchers already using our data and/or summary lever results.