In Focus
Biobanking benefits donors and blood services
The Finnish Biobank
Finnish Red Cross Blood Service (FRCBS) collected the first sample for its biobank the “Blood Service Biobank” in 2017. Since then, biobank consents have been gathered from 70000 donors of which 57000 have been whole genome genotyped.
FinnGen
Key enablers for Blood Service Biobank have been the modern legislation, the Finnish Biobank Act1, that has provided the legal framework and the FinnGen project2 that has provided funding and infrastructure. Importantly, the Biobank Act enables health-related research under a broad consent with unspecified future research purposes. The Finnish population is known for its strong genetic bottleneck effect that enables discovery of novel disease associated variants not found elsewhere2.
This has attracted international research funding, exemplified by FinnGen project, to Finland. Finnish biobanks require that research projects return individual level results to biobank which constantly enriches the data in biobanks. For example, the FinnGen project has returned the whole genome genotyping data from 57000 blood donors to Blood Service Biobank.
Biobanking of blood donors is valuable for biomedical research for numerous reasons. First, they provide a set of healthy controls for hospital-based samples. Secondly, many blood donors develop diseases later in life and hence sampling them now provides samples of pre-disease state. Thirdly, the blood donor population can exhibit specific genetic biases that can be used for more powerful experimental designs3. Blood donors are also known to be research friendly4 and they can be often sampled repeatedly.
Figure 1. From blood bag to benefits (*GWAS = Genome Wide Association Study). Created in BioRender. Arvas, M. (2025) https://BioRender.com/ys23fub
Blood Service Biobank is specialized in transfusion medicine-related questions for the benefit of both the recipient and the blood donor (Figure 1). Blood group imputation5 has made it much easier to find donors with rare blood group antigens for the benefit of patients. In parallel, imputation of HLA alleles6 has enabled identification of HLA-A-B homozygous donors that cover vast majority of the Finnish population7. These individuals are valuable donors for highly immunized patients or patients with rare tissue type.
To improve the donor health and donation safety we have studied genetics of iron deficiency anemia and iron overload i.e. hemochromatosis. We have found a genetic variant, strongly enriched in the Finnish population, that almost doubles the risk of iron deficiency anemia8, has a strong decreasing effect on plasma ferritin level3 and could reveal novel iron biology.
For iron overload we have estimated that two whole blood donations a year is likely sufficient to maintain healthy iron balance for individuals homozygous for HFE C282Y9. Also, as a first experiment to return genetic data for blood donors we have returned for carriers their C282Y homozygous status, informed them of their hemochromatosis risk and guided them to health care provider for further consultation. We showed a high occurrence of blood donors not being aware of their genetic predisposition for hemochromatosis, a relatively high penetrance of the HFE C282Y (+/+) genotype, and a clear acceptance from the donors to receive genetic risk information from the biobank10.
Furthermore, we have shown at genetic level that blood donation runs in families, i.e. blood donors are more related to each other than general population11. We have elucidated the genetic basis of the healthy donor effect for the first time and shown that this selection bias leads into strong genetic selection3. Hence, healthy donor effect is not just behavioral selection, but also genetic selection. Surprisingly, genetics of blood donation seems not to be only about body size, anemia and iron, but various other disease categories and maybe even more about mental health. This opens completely new research directions to address challenges of apparent diminished motivation of people, especially young, to donate blood and in parallel, of aging population.
Biobanking is not of course a trivial exercise to initiate and maintain, nevertheless we have found it a tremendous opportunity to benefit research at large, but also directly our donors and recipients of the blood products.
If you are interested in the samples or data of our biobank check out https://www.veripalvelu.fi/en/biobank/ or contact biopankki@veripalvelu.fi.
References
1. Ministry of Social Affairs and Health F. Biobank Act. 688/2012 2012. https://www.finlex.fi/en/legislation/translations/2012/eng/688 2. Kurki MI, Karjalainen J, Palta P, Sipilä TP, Kristiansson K, Donner KM, et al. FinnGen provides genetic insights from a well-phenotyped isolated population. Nature. 2023 Jan 19;613(7944):508–18. 3. Clancy J, Toivonen J, Lauronen J, Koskela S, Partanen J, FinnGen, et al. Genome-Wide Association Study Identifies Protective Genetic Factors in Active Blood Donors Against Multiple Diseases. 2025. 4. Raivola V, Snell K, Helén I, Partanen J. Attitudes of blood donors to their sample and data donation for biobanking. European Journal of Human Genetics 2019. 5. Hyvärinen K, Haimila K, Moslemi C, Biobank BS, Olsson ML, Ostrowski SR, et al. A machine-learning method for biobank-scale genetic prediction of blood group antigens. PLoS Comput Biol. 2024; 20(3):e1011977. 6. Ritari J, Hyvärinen K, Clancy J, FinnGen, Partanen J, Koskela S. Increasing accuracy of HLA imputation by a population-specific reference panel in a FinnGen biobank cohort. NAR Genom Bioinform. 2020;2(2):1–9. 7. Clancy J, Hyvärinen K, Ritari J, Wahlfors T, Partanen J, Koskela S. Blood donor biobank and HLA imputation as a resource for HLA homozygous cells for therapeutic and research use. Stem Cell Res Ther. 2022;13(1):1–11. 8. Toivonen J, Allara E, Castrén J, di Angelantonio E, Arvas M. The value of genetic data from 665,460 individuals in managing iron deficiency anaemia and suitability to donate blood. Vox Sang. 2024. 119(1):34–42. 9. Toivonen J, Clancy J, FinnGen, Åberg F, Ritari J, Arvas M. Quantifying risk modifiers of hereditary hemochromatosis using genomic and electronic health record data from FinnGen and UK Biobank. medRxiv. 2025. 10. Clancy J, Forstén J, Koskinen E, Arvas M, Åberg F, Pitkänen K, et al. Biobank Participants’ Perspectives on Receiving Genetic Risk Information from a Biobank – The case of Haemochromatosis. 2025. 11. Clancy J, Ritari J, Vaittinen E, Arvas M, Tammi S, Koskela S, et al. Blood donor biobank as a resource in personalised biomedical genetic research. European Journal of Human Genetics. 2024
