Each SCALLOP member works on human study collections from the general population, clinical trials or patients with certain diseases such as coronary artery disease, rheumatoid arthritis, bipolar disease, heart failure, dementias or metabolic syndrome.

The aim of the SCALLOP consortium is to identify novel molecular connections and protein biomarkers that are causal in diseases.

This work starts with identification of so called protein quantitative trait loci, pQTLs, which are robust connections between a gene variant and the levels of a protein.

There are two types of pQTLs:

• cis-pQTLs are variants that are proximal to the gene encoding the protein under study whereas trans-pQTLs are distal regulation of proteins via an often unknown path.
• Trans-pQTLs can provide unique insights of molecular connections in human biology.

Cis-pQTLs are strong instruments for determining if a protein biomarker for disease is causing disease or elevated or suppressed as a consequence of it. The SCALLOP consortium is currently underway with mapping novel pQTLs for several 100s of proteins in unprecedented sample sizes, something which will yield much deeper insights into the trans-regulation of plasma proteins than what has been possible to date.

Identify causal protein biomarkers

Operations

To be a member of the SCALLOP consortium you have to be the PI of a study collection with Olink proteomics and genome-wide genotyping data. We also expect members to sign up to the Consortium Agreement, which manages conduct and authorships. Download the Consortium Agreement here.

The leadership for subprojects within the SCALLOP consortium rotates and members can take new ideas and suggestions for additional subprojects to the monthly steering committee meetings.

SCALLOP uses a dedicated server for sharing of data. The server is set up under the Danish node of the TRYGGVE server structure. TRYGGVE allows sharing of sensitive data thanks to 2-step authorization procedures and high data security. Thanks to this structure SCALLOP is set up to move to individual-level data should the consortium wish to do so.

Participating cohorts

Acronym	Disease / Design	Sample size	Olink panels
1000IBD	Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis	1000	1
Aristotle	Atrial fibrillation	1500	3
ASAP	Aortic valve surgery	573	5
BAMSE	Childhood asthma	2000	1
Bialystok PLUS	Population based, CVD/CHD	899	5
BioFinder	Dementia	1550	4
CARDIA	Prospective, young adults	2000	2
COLLIBRI (Swedish cohorts)	Cross-sectional	607	2
COSM-C	Population based	4500	3
Dan-NICAD	Stable coronary artery disease	1650	3
DIRECT	Diabetes	3000	5
EpiHealth	Prospective observational	2500	3
Estonian Biobank	Population based	500	4
FastBIO	Population based, observational	500	4
FENLAND	Population based	500	15
FLEMENGHO	Population based	3500+	1
Framingham Heart Study	Population based	520	5
HELIC MANOLIS	Population based	1356	5
HELIC POMAK	Population based	1537	5
I AM Frontier	Deep phenotyping, Longitudinal	240	15
IMPROVE	Prospective, metabolic syndrome	3403	1
INTERVAL	Blood donors	5000	4
Kadoorie biobank	Pancreatic cancer	1400	1
KARMA	Incident breast cancer	1820	2
KORA F4	Population based	1050	1
LBC1936	Population aged 72	750	1
LifeLines Deep	Population based	1200	1
Pfizer/ MadCam_ph2	Inflammatory bowel disease	200	3
MPP-RES	Heart failure	1000	1
NSPHS	Population isolate	1000	6
ORCADES	Population isolate	1000	15
PIVUS	Prospective observational	933	1
POLRED	Population-based, diabetes	1500	5
PRIDE	Dementia	1500	14
PROCARDIS	Coronary artery disease	900	1
PURE	Epidemiological cohort	8000	15
Qmdiab	Diabetes	320	2
RECOMBINE	Rheumatoid arthritis	800	1
RISC	Prospective observational	1000	9
Rotterdam	Population based	250	1
Rotterdam Study-III cohort	Population based	3500	2
SAHLSIS	Case-control, ischemic stroke	1200	2
SAHLSIS 2	Cases, stroke	200	15
SMCC/ SIMPLER	Population based, women	5000	3
STABILITY	Acute coronary syndrome	3000	2
Stanford IST cohorts	TBA	1150	#
STANLEY	Bipolar disorder, depression	681	4
SWHS/ SMHS/ SCCS	Population based	300	14
ULSAM	Prospective observational	1000	9
VIS	Population isolate	1000	3
WHI	Clinical trial, mixed population, women	1400	6

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