Lifebit, a leading provider of secure biomedical data platforms and Trusted Research Environments (TREs), has been awarded a three-year contract by the University of Cambridge to provide the Trusted Research Environment for the NIHR BioResource. The contract was awarded by the University of Cambridge on behalf of the NIHR BioResource.
The NIHR BioResource, a national asset for translational research, enables researchers to work with deeply consented participant data and rich clinical and molecular datasets. With a large national footprint and a broad participant base, it plays a critical role in accelerating discovery across common and rare diseases.
Under the contract, Lifebit’s TRE will be deployed within the NIHR BioResource’s AWS cloud tenancy. This will provide the programme with the most advanced, fully federated enterprise platform in the market, keeping data in place to eliminate transfer and duplication while delivering the highest standard of security-by-design aligned to the Five Safes Framework. Lifebit’s platform includes end-to-end encryption, granular access controls, continuous security posture management, observability, Security Tower, and AI-Automated Airlock and Airlock Tower for governed, fully auditable data egress. It also offers a battle-tested user experience, high scalability for large-scale analytics, and cost-efficient execution at enterprise scale.
This contract builds on Lifebit’s track record of delivering secure research infrastructure for some of the world’s most important data initiatives. With over six years of TRE delivery with Genomics England and a long-standing relationship with the University of Cambridge, providing the CYNAPSE TRE platform for molecular research groups working with sensitive genomic and clinical data, Lifebit is well-equipped to support the NIHR BioResource.
Professor Nathalie Kingston, Director of the NIHR BioResource, expressed her delight with the partnership, stating, “I am delighted that BioResource will work with Lifebit. What impressed us about Lifebit was its comprehensive expertise across the full spectrum required for a research platform like this – from data and bioinformatics to security, governance and cloud delivery. The Lifebit platform will allow researchers to mine and analyse our richly-characterised dataset to further transform translational research. Lifebit’s experience supporting other key national platforms, such as Genomics England, was also highly relevant and gave us confidence in their ability to deliver for a resource of this importance.”
Dr Maria Dunford, CEO of Lifebit, also shared her enthusiasm about the partnership, saying, “This award reflects Lifebit’s proven experience delivering trusted research infrastructure for leading organisations, including Genomics England, NIH-NLM, Singapore’s TRUST platform and Boehringer Ingelheim. We are proud to support the NIHR BioResource with a platform designed for secure, efficient research on complex clinico-molecular data at scale, while maintaining the governance, control and flexibility required for a nationally significant resource. Just as importantly, it opens the door to future federation between the NIHR BioResource and other major cohorts, including Genomics England in the UK and the national precision medicine programmes Lifebit supports internationally, from Singapore to Israel to Canada and US.”
The platform will help the NIHR BioResource continue to support a broad community of researchers from industry and academia, working across discovery, translational science and clinical research, while strengthening the infrastructure needed to deliver secure and efficient research at national scale.
As the demand for federated, cloud-based trusted research environment infrastructure grows across the UK life sciences ecosystem, this partnership marks a further step in enabling world-class biomedical research through secure, scalable and interoperable data environments.
About Lifebit
Lifebit provides secure, cloud-native technology that enables organisations to unify, govern and analyse biomedical data at scale. Its Trusted Research Environment platform supports leading public and private sector organisations to accelerate discovery while maintaining the highest standards of security, compliance and data governance.
About NIHR BioResource
The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) BioResource is a unique resource for studying disease mechanisms and investigating the links between genes, the environment, health and disease, enabling scientific discoveries and facilitating translational medicine for the benefit of patients.
More than 350,000 adult and child volunteers, with and without health conditions, have donated a biological sample, shared health and lifestyle information, and given consent to participate in research. Researchers can apply for access to participant data, samples, and the opportunity to recall by genotype and/or phenotype to help deliver research studies into a wide range of common and rare diseases.
