There were three major goals in the establishment of the NIAAA/COGA Sharing Repository in 1996, over 36 years ago. First, there was the perceived need to have quality‐assured biosamples from each COGA participant and to minimize differences between individual COGA samples due to potential collection, extraction or storage variables. Impetus to establish an ongoing biorepository also came from the belief that developing technologies for genome analysis would improve in the future and likely become more cost efficient (e.g., single nucleotide polymorphism and DNA sequencing) and that ample amounts of biosample of consistent quality would be required for such analyses. Third, there was the desire to collaborate with other groups by sharing COGA samples, thereby introducing more uniformity into research on the genetics of alcohol use disorder.
