NEW YORK – Illumina on Thursday announced a collaboration with Ovation.io to sequence the genomes of 25,000 patients who have received treatment with glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists, such as Ozempic (semaglutide). In addition, Illumina will analyze protein expression in 5,000 samples with its Illumina Protein Prep (IPP) assay, which detects 9,500 human proteins.
Financial and other terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Under the multiyear agreement, Illumina and Ovation will create and launch an integrated dataset of phenotypic, genomic, and proteomic data of patients treated with GLP-1 drugs, including non-responders. The goal is to accelerate GLP-1 therapy development, research on new indications, and discovery of biomarkers and drug targets in patients not responding to the existing drugs.
Ovation will provide existing blood samples from its biobank and collect additional samples over the next year. Illumina will complete whole-genome sequencing for the project by the end of 2026.
The partners plan to license the data to pharmaceutical companies. In addition, "Illumina and Ovation may explore academic research collaborations in the future," an Illumina spokesperson said in an email.
"The power of whole-genome and multiomic insights to impact all diseases is coming into focus, and metabolic disease is a prime example," Todd Christian, Illumina senior VP of services, arrays, and genomic access, said in a statement. "This collaboration and its novel clinical dataset will be crucial to advancing the next wave of these potential life-changing therapies and ensuring more patients can benefit from them."
Though sales of GLP-1 therapies have taken off in recent years, approximately 40 percent of type 2 diabetes patients do not respond effectively, the firms said in a statement. The new database will be the largest of several efforts to identify predictive biomarkers for response to treatment.
The new collaboration stems from a partnership the firms announced late last year. They also plan to create datasets for liver disease and chronic kidney disease.
Illumina's IPP assay uses sequencing to read out aptamers that bind to proteins. It was developed in collaboration with Standard BioTools, which acquired the technology when it bought SomaLogic.
Portland, Maine-based Ovation offers a cloud-based laboratory information management system and a research network of clinical laboratories. Its biobank includes more than 1.7 million de-identified samples.