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Mount Sinai, Regeneron Collaborate on Biobank Sequencing

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Mount Sinai Health System and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals today announced a collaboration on biobank sequencing.

Regeneron's Genetics Center will perform whole-exome sequencing on 33,000 DNA and plasma samples from Mount Sinai's BioMe Biobank, which links DNA sequencing data to clinical information taken from electronic medical records (EMRs). The partners will look for "actionable insights about human diseases that may be applied to drug discovery and development," they said in a statement.

"This partnership provides an important means of more effectively personalizing medical care throughout the Mount Sinai Health System," Judy Cho, a professor Mount Sinai's Icahn School of Medicine and the director of the school's Bronfman Institute for Personalized Medicine, said in a statement. She added that the BioMe biobank features a diverse patient population.

Financial and other terms of the collaboration were not disclosed.

Tarrytown, New York-based Regeneron has partnered with numerous healthcare providers to pair sequencing data with de-identified patient EMR data with the goal of finding new drug targets, disease-associated genetic variants, and pharmacogenomic profiles. Most recently, the firm linked up with Sweden's Lund University in July to study the genetics of diabetes.

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