NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – BGI and H3 Biomedicine today announced they will sequence and publish data from next-generation sequencing-based research on pre-clinical cancer models.
In the first study to be performed under the terms of the partnership, BGI will sequence 250 cancer cell lines using next-generation whole-exome sequencing. It and H3 Biomedicine will jointly analyze the data and then deliver a highly curated set of "genetically profiled, pre-clinical model information that will help to accelerate drug discovery and development efforts."
The goal of the partnership is to identify and validate recurrent gene mutations that have the potential to serve as drug therapy targets. The companies noted that results from their work will be published in an open-access format.
"We see this as a significant step in building shared translational oncology platforms that will bring the research community together to deliver new personalized medicines, especially for those people living with cancers for which there are, today, limited treatment options," Markus Warmuth, president and CEO of H3 Biomedicine, a biopharmaceutical firm based in Cambridge, Mass., said in a statement.
BGI Americas CEO Yingrui Li added, "I believe this partnership will yield significant, valuable genomic information that will lay a solid foundation for developing pre-clinical cancer models and new anti-cancer drugs to benefit human health."
Financial and other terms of the deal were not disclosed.