Collaboration Initiated to Accelerate Use of Genomics Research for Medical Applications

Applied Biosystems (Carlsbad, CA, USA), a division of Life Technologies Corp., and the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen; Phoenix, AZ, USA) have announced a strategic alliance designed to accelerate research into complex diseases and medical disorders.

As part of this alliance, a team of scientists from TGen and Applied Biosystems will employ the SOLiD 3 system, Applied Biosystems' next-generation genomic analysis platform, to sequence DNA from thousands of patients with a variety of diseases. The aim of this research is to convert scientific discoveries at the genetic level into knowledge about the underlying causes of disease, advancing the potential of personalized medicine by reducing the cost of genome sequencing to make it a common diagnostic tool in medical care.

The scientists involved in this alliance will use a total of five SOLiD 3 systems to build a sequencing pipeline in connection with patient centric, medically directed resequencing on a cross-section of patient samples. The results are expected to positively impact individuals with cancer, autoimmune, and neurologic disorders. The alliance will also involve the codevelopment of a bioinformatics analysis and visualization pipeline for the SOLiD platform. This will result in software tools designed to ease the challenges associated with analyzing the vast amounts of data generated by human disease and cancer genomics applications of next generation sequencing.

The scientists at TGen chose the SOLiD technology for this project because of its inherent scalability, remarkable throughput and data accuracy. These attributes make the SOLiD system uniquely suited for translational research of complicated diseases by enabling the detection of single nucleotide polymorphisms and other structural variation across the genome in large numbers of samples. The technology is for research use only; it is not for use in diagnostic procedures.

Related Links:
Applied Biosystems
Translational Genomics Research Institute