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Genomics Medicine Ireland, Academic Collaborators to Study Asthma Genetics

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) — Genomics Medicine Ireland said on Wednesday that it has partnered with two research institutes in Ireland to investigate the genomics of chronic respiratory conditions.

According to the Dublin-based life sciences company, it will work with researchers at St. Vincent's University and University College Dublin to identify genetic factors common to individuals with asthma and asthma-chronic obstructive pulmonary disease overlap syndrome. The partners believe that their findings could help with predicting disease severity, understanding complex disease subtypes, and developing personalized treatment regimens.

"Asthma … can present itself in an as-of-yet undefined number of distinct diseases that all fall under the generic umbrella term of 'asthma,'" St. Vincent's University Hospital researcher Marcus Butler said in a statement. "The potential of genomics is that, in future, we could unambiguously identify and treat the many variants of asthma on a person-to-person basis, avoiding unnecessary patient morbidity from imprecise diagnosis and side effects of futile therapy, in addition to saving a significant amount of time, money, and effort in the process."

Late last year, Genomics Medicine Ireland partnered with a number of institutions, including St. Vincent's University, to identify genetic markers of multiple sclerosis. The year before, the company launched an Irish population-based genomics project to sequence 60,000 whole genomes and genotype 100,000 individuals.

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