NEW YORK – Multinational bioinformatics and sequencing firm WuXi NextCode has rebranded itself Genuity Science as it announced plans to restructure as a single entity while it sheds its Chinese operations.
Genuity Science will continue to offer contract genomics and artificial intelligence-driven data sourcing and data analytics services to the biopharmaceutical industry to support drug discovery and development. The company is headquartered in Boston and has offices in Reykjavik, Iceland, and Dublin, as well as CAP-accredited, CLIA-certified sequencing laboratories in Woburn, Massachusetts, and Dublin.
It is not related to business analytics and IT management firm Genuity.
The renamed firm will continue to seek a buyer or other method of disposing of WuXi NextCode's Shanghai operations, a process that started a year ago amid security concerns regarding changes to China’s Human Genetic Resource Regulation. Two influential US senators raised questions in June 2019 about the security of patient data, given that WuXi NextCode had a relationship with Chinese state-owned telecommunications firm Huawei.
The Dublin operations were previously known as Genomics Medicine Ireland. Irish media had also raised questions about WuXi NextCode's data security practices, though executives said last year that data collected in Ireland was compliant with the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation.
"This restructuring allows us to sharpen the short-term strategic focus of our business to better catalyze the biopharma industry's ability to effectively and efficiently integrate genomic data and insights into their drug development endeavors," Genuity Science CEO Rob Brainin said in a statement. "Our long-term vision and commitment to improving the lives of patients by accelerating the pace of precision health remains the same."
Brainin said that the new name, which plays on the word, "ingenuity," is more in line with the company's mission and strategic direction.
"Nowhere has this been more real for us than in the fight against COVID-19, where in the space of four weeks, Genuity Science pivoted its Irish operations to both support testing in Ireland and also provide free genomic sequencing services to scientists in order to hasten understanding of the virus on infected patients across Ireland," he added.