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.
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.
Affy said it will supply the NGFN with its SNP Array 6.0 when it is available later in the year.
Illumina said the NGFN purchased its Infinium HumanCNV370-Duo, HumanHap300-Duo, and HumanHap550 BeadChips.
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.
The data from these studies will be compared against information from healthy subjects to identify genetic variations that may be linked to the disease.
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.
Financial terms of the agreements were not released.