The partnership will help CICGD scientists perform gene sequencing and bioinformatics analysis with the intent to accelerate research, clinical diagnosis, and the treatment of rare inherited diseases and malignant tumors.
WuXi NextCODE's technology is being used to analyze and manage whole-genome data on 350,000 people, which the company says is more than any other system worldwide.
Fudan led the establishment of CICGD in 2012 under the auspices of the Higher Education Institution Innovation Improvement Plan implemented by China's Ministry of Education and Ministry of Finance. The CICGD brings together several other Chinese research institutions, including Shanghai Jiaotong University,Nanjing University, Zhongshan University, Central South University, the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, and the Beijing Institute of Genomics.
Li Jin, Director of CICGD and VP ofFudan University, said: "Fudan's partnership with WuXi will turn Shanghai into a premier global innovation center for human genomics."
Genomics England Clinical Interpretation Tender
In other news for WuXi NextCODE, the company said that after two rounds of head-to-head evaluation against leading sequence analysis providers, it was the only system selected by GeL (Genomics England) to provide clinical interpretation of the whole genome sequences of both rare disease and cancer patients as part of the first phase of the 100,000 Genomes Project (UK100K) of the UK National Health Service (NHS).
WuXi NextCODE will deploy its database model and clinical and tumor-normal analysis and reporting systems at GeL, enabling NHS clinicians to begin to efficiently analyze patient sequence data and to identify causative variants in rare diseases and driver mutations in tumors.
GeL plans to sequence and interpret the genomes of 8,000 patients in the initial phase of the project and to test the systems prior to contracting with four companies.
Established by the UK Department of Health with the aim of sequencing 100,000 whole genomes from about 75,000 volunteer participants by 2017, GeL's will look to recruit NHS patients with common cancers, as well as NHS patients with rare diseases and their families.