Press release
Illumina collaborates with Nashville Biosciences to accelerate medicines development
Collaboration will transform new insights into drug discovery and therapy development through large-scale genomics SAN DIEGO, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ --
About this update from Illumina, Inc.
[{"type":"text","content":"Collaboration will transform new insights into drug discovery and therapy development through large-scale genomics\n\n\nSAN DIEGO, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ: ILMN) and Nashville Biosciences, LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), today announced a multi-year agreement to accelerate medicines development through large-scale genomics and the establishment of a preeminent clinico-genomic resource. Using Illumina's next-generation sequencing (NGS) platforms, scientists and researchers will be able to better identify disease associations and targets for intervention by analyzing data derived from VUMC's extensive, high-quality biobank of approximately 250,000 de-identified human DNA samples and associated longitudinal, structured medical data. \n\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\n \nDrug discovery is a difficult, expensive, and often time-consuming endeavor, with 90 percent of therapies failing in development. Medicines available today work on just a few hundred targets in the body while around 3,000 genes encode proteins that may be receptive to drug intervention. Genomics-based methods can find targets that are more likely to modify disease in a beneficial way, having the potential to greatly improve the speed of therapy development. \nThe BioVU® biobank includes a de-identified data set of approximately 250,000 human DNA samples extracted from discarded blood collected during routine clinical testing and consented for research use, aligned with extensive structured clinical data derived from VUMC's electronic medical records over the past 15 years. Illumina will deliver whole-genome sequencing on the samples and upload the data to the Illumina Connected Analytics platform. Together, Nashville Biosciences and Illumina will establish a commercial alliance of multiple pharmaceutical and biotechnology partners to analyze the data for drug discovery and therapy development. \n\"Nashville Biosciences' enriched biobank data, coupled with Illumina's extensive genomics and bioinformatics expertise, will enable scientists and researchers to generate new insights into disease and develop new medicines,\" said Joydeep Goswami, Chief Strategy and Corporate Development Officer of Illumina. \"Together, we will be able to identify potential targets that could lower costs, improve development t...