H3 Biomedicine, BGI To Provide Open Access Cancer Genomic Data

H3 Biomedicine Inc. and BGI have entered into a partnership to sequence and publish genomic data from pre-clinical cancer models.

AsianScientist (Apr. 1, 2013) – H3 Biomedicine Inc., a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biopharmaceutical company specializing in the discovery and development of oncology treatments, and BGI, a Beijing-based genomics company, have entered into a partnership to sequence and publish genomic data from pre-clinical cancer models.

The research aims to identify and validate recurrent gene mutations that are potential targets for drug therapies, and to release the cancer genomic data to the global research community upon completion of data analysis.

“We truly believe that genomic information generated from patient samples or material derived thereof should be shared with the scientific community. As a matter of fact, the community has benefited enormously from collaborative efforts like The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC),” said Markus Warmuth, M.D., president and chief executive officer, H3 Biomedicine.

Recent advances in human cancer genomics have revealed novel cancer target opportunities that may someday enable personalized cancer medicine approaches. But many of the identified recurrent gene mutations exist at low frequencies and the information necessary to select relevant pre-clinical models to study these mutations does not exist.

Under the partnership, BGI will sequence 250 cancer cell lines via next-generation, whole exome sequencing in this first study. H3 Biomedicine and BGI will jointly analyze the data to deliver a highly curated set of genetically profiled, pre-clinical model information that may help to accelerate drug discovery and development efforts.

“We are pleased to collaborate with H3 Biomedicine, and to have this opportunity to apply our state-of-the-art, next-gen sequencing capabilities and bioinformatics expertise to help advance the discovery of novel cancer drug targets and full-scale pharmacogenomics findings,” said Yingrui Li, chief executive officer of BGI Americas.

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Source: H3Biomedicine.
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