Over the next year or so, the investigators plan to sequence the genomes of 3,000 patients with cancer, heart disease, diabetes, or neurological disorders.
Based on their findings, the researchers hypothesized that the plaque microbiome acted as a "stepping stone" for environmental bacteria to adapt to a host.
Weill Cornell Medicine, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, and the New York Genome Center will join Illumina to sequence the genomes of thousands of patients.
The funding is being provided under the NYGC's Polyethnic-1000 initiative, which was launched in 2018 to study cancer care inequities in underserved populations.
The grant will allow Weill Cornell to study genetic, social, and clinical factors that might explain why COVID-19 disproportionally affects minorities in the US.
The firm has partnered with Illumina to use the Dragen Bio-IT informatics platform to help customers analyze data from the new Cancer Transcriptome Atlas panel.
The New York Times reports that experts say President Joe Biden's goal of vaccinating 1 million people a day in the US in the next 100 days is too low a bar.
