NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – BGI and the Vancouver Prostate Centre in Canada have signed a memorandum of understanding to conduct joint prostate cancer research, the two organizations said yesterday.
The agreement will bring together BGI's sequencing, genomics, and computing technologies and VPC's translational cancer research and drug development program.
The BGI-VPC Joint Research Laboratory, which was established in 2014, will also work to advance individualized therapy for cancer, carry out clinical trials, and commercialize treatments for prostate and other cancers.
BGI and VPC said that over the past two years, they have already combined their clinical expertise, a repository of metastatic and post-treatment cancer specimens, and genomics to develop targeted therapies, including noninvasive liquid biopsy tests to monitor patients with advanced metastatic prostate cancer.
"This agreement will bridge research and training from the best researchers in British Columbia and China to share expertise in meeting our goal to control prostate and other cancers,” said Colin Collins, director of the BGI-VPC Joint Research Laboratory and a professor in the Department of Urologic Sciences at the University of British Columbia and at BGI, in a statement.