NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Emory University School of Medicine and Akesogen said today that they are collaborating on the Emory Healthy Aging Study, which aims to identify predictive markers for diseases that occur more commonly in the later years of life.
Over the next few years the study will recruit thousands of participants to build an extensive database of personal health information. Eventually, it hopes to enroll 100,000 individuals. The collected data may also help participants, through consultation with their physicians, learn more about their overall health.
Among other components, the study will involve assaying proteomic markers for dementias including Alzheimer's disease, and understanding genomic markers as part of the normal aging process, Akesogen CSO Mark Bouzyk said in an email.
Additional examples of diseases to be studied include heart disease and diabetes.
"A study of this scale, gathering large amounts of health data across a diverse participant population, will help us learn more about a host of age-related diseases," Michele Marcus, professor of epidemiology at Emory and a lead investigator of the study, said in a statement.
Akesogen, based in Atlanta, is an integrated CLIA-compliant and CAP-accredited genomics, genetics, and bio-banking company that services the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, clinical, academic, and government sectors for clinical trials, diagnostic clinical testing, and research.