The facility plans to use the BeadLab station initially for research into the genetics of breast and prostate cancer and will support the NCI's Cancer Genetic Markers of Susceptibility initiative.
NCI researchers plan to genotype approximately 15,000 loci for each of more than 6,000 DNA samples. Later, they want to develop a pool of 1,536 SNP assays associated with prostate cancer and genotype over 15,000 samples to validate a set of biomarkers for prostate cancer.
Illumina has already been providing genotyping services for the NCI's SNP500 cancer project.