This infrastructural project is targeted at strategic development of that component of the 1958 Birth Cohort

(1958BC) that is known as the "Biomedical Resource". It will ensure that optimum utility can be extracted

from the Resource during 2011-2014 and that the 1958BC will then be well placed to maintain and extend its

internationally hailed contribution to research in the biomedical and social sciences. The proposal subsumes

three complementary objectives: (1) secure the basic infrastructure as it now exists, thus ensuring that the

successful systems that have already been implemented can be maintained into the future; (2) enhance the

infrastructure from an administrative and strategic management perspective to ensure that it can face

expected and unexpected future challenges and opportunities both effectively and resiliently; (3) enhance the

infrastructure from a scientific perspective to ensure that both the 1958BC, and UK Bioscience, are best

placed to face the scientific challenges of the future. The new science underpinning this application is

focused entirely on optimising and enhancing the utility of the pre-existing Biomedical Resource - the

proposal contains no hypothesis-driven research and no funding is sought for additional data or sample

collection from study participants. The responsibility for strategic development of the cohort as a whole -

including planning for future data sweeps - will remain with the Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS). This

application reflects a considered evolution in the thinking of the funders (MRC, WT, ESRC) about strategic

development of the 1958BC Biomedical Resource and of the systems and policies governing access to it.

Initially, responsibility for access and strategic development lay with the Principal Investigators of the

original grant. But, it later became clear that if resource utility was to be optimised it should be managed and

developed by independent scientists and administrators. In 2008, responsibility for managing the 1958BC

biobank therefore transferred to ALSPAC laboratories at the University of Bristol under a joint grant from

MRC/WT. Then, in 2009, responsibility for oversight and strategic development of the Biomedical Resource

as a whole passed to the independent access committee chaired from the University of Leicester under

another small grant from MRC/WT. Following strategic discussions with MRC, WT and ESRC, the

University of Leicester and University of Bristol now outline a vision for joint management of the Biomedical

Resource, to include its strategic development as an infrastructure, under a grant requesting limited - but

adequate - funding to ensure sustainability.