NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Genomics England said today that it has contracted with Congenica and Omicia to interpret genomic data from the first 8,000 patients participating in the UK's 100,000 Genomes Project.
The two firms were selected from a pool of four informatics companies and one reserve that were tapped to participate in a test phase that launched this past summer. Genomics England plans to continue working with Nanthealth and WuXiNextcode — the two other companies that participated in this phase — and also with the reserve bidder Lockheed Martin, who has partnered with Cypher Genomics for the project. This is in addition to Genomics England’s ongoing work with sequencing partner Illumina, who also is exploring a variety of bioinformatic challenges around sequencing and clinical interpretation.
Genomics England also announced that Berg Health and NGM Biopharmaceuticals have joined its industry collaboration, known as the GENE Consortium. They join the other members of the consortium who are already working on a year-long industry trial that aims to assess how best to work with Genomics England to develop new diagnostics and treatments for patients.
Berg said that it will use its Interrogative Biology Platform and data analytics expertise to develop an analytical tool to process date from the 100,000 Genomes Project.