NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) — The National Genome Research Network of Germany has bought hardware from Illumina and Affymetrix for large-scale research projects that aim to genotype more than 20,000 patients in studies of major diseases, Illumina and Affymetrix said separately today.
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Affymetrix said the NGFN has purchased its Genome-Wide Human SNP Array 5.0 to genotype 17,000 individuals in a study of 25 diseases, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, malaria, heart disease, and epilepsy.
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Affy said it will supply the NGFN with its SNP Array 6.0 when it is available later in the year.
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Illumina said the NGFN purchased its Infinium HumanCNV370-Duo, HumanHap300-Duo, and HumanHap550 BeadChips. Â
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The company said the NGFN will employ these tools in an 8,000-subject genotyping study investigating bipolar disease, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, alcoholism, inflammatory bowel disease, and psoriasis.
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The data from these studies will be compared against information from healthy subjects to identify genetic variations that may be linked to the disease.
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The NGFN is a genomics research program commissioned in 2001 by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The program’s second phase runs between 2004 and 2007 and it is fuelled by €135 million ($184 million) in German government funds.
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Financial terms of the agreements were not released.