NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) - Illumina said today said the Johns Hopkins Medical School will use its BeadChip tool as part of a large asthma study.
Illumina said the Johns Hopkins researchers and colleagues from the National Human Genome Center at Howard University will use its Infinium HumanHap650Y to identify genes related to asthma in a study that will include 2000 individuals and their families.
The study will focus on African-American and African-Caribbean volunteers. Illumina CEO Jay Flatley said this particular BeadChip technology is designed for studying African populations.
Some genes have already been linked closely to asthma, the company said, but a comprehensive analysis has not been done specifically aimed at studying African populations.
The results from this study will be compared with those of a similar study in England, and with data from an ongoing Yale University study of asthma in European ancestry.
The study is funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and the NIH and the National Institutes of Health.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
This is not Illumina's first deal with Johns Hopkins. In 2003 the school's Institute of Genetic Medicine was using Illumina's BeadLab for SNP-genotyping, according to GenomeWeb News sister publication Pharmacogenomics Reporter.