AsianScientist (Sep. 13, 2011) – Merck, known as MSD outside the United States and Canada, and genomics company BGI announced today that they have established a collaboration to focus on the discovery and development of biomarkers and genomic technologies.
Under the agreement, scientists from Merck and BGI will work closely together to identify and characterize biomarkers with an emphasis on drug discovery, drug development, and diagnostics applications across a wide range of therapeutic areas.
“This strategic collaboration combines BGI’s genomic sequencing and analytic capabilities with Merck’s expertise and experience in drug development,” said Dr. Jeffrey Chodakewitz, vice president, Late Stage Development, Merck Research Laboratories.
“By working together we hope to apply BGI’s comprehensive next-gen sequencing solutions to develop important new tools to aid drug development and enable effective tailoring of medicines to those patients most likely to respond,” he added.
This agreement follows the September 2010 signing of a statement of intent to initiate and develop a working relationship with the common goal of creating value from the massive output of genomic information enabled by next-generation, high-throughput DNA sequencing and analysis technologies.
“We welcome this opportunity to bring extensive genomics experience to our collaboration with Merck, as well as our expertise in transcriptomics, proteomics and bioinformatics. Through this close collaboration with Merck, we are confident that we will achieve more important breakthroughs to accelerate disease genomics research and drug R&D to facilitate improved health care,” said Ye Yin, President of Research and Cooperation Division at BGI.
BGI’s sequencing projects include sequencing one percent of the human genome for the International Human Genome Project, contributing 10 percent to the International Human HapMap Project, and completing the sequence of the rice genome, the silkworm genome, the potato genome, and, most recently, 1000 genomes and human Gut metagenome.
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Source: Merck & Co. Inc.
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