Rivals Help Fund Regeneron's Gene-Sequencing Effort
08 January 2018 - 11:29PM
Dow Jones News
By Joseph Walker
Some of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies are pooling
resources to fund an ambitious genetic and medical database aimed
at bolstering the search for new drugs.
AbbVie Inc., Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc., AstraZeneca PLC,
Biogen Inc. and Pfizer Inc. will pay $10 million each to Regeneron
Pharmaceuticals Inc., which began the project last year in
partnership with the U.K. Biobank, a nonprofit that has collected
DNA samples and health records from half a million people in the
U.K., and drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline PLC.
The new funding will help Regeneron complete the database by the
end of next year, the companies said Monday. In exchange, the five
companies will have exclusive access to the data for six to 12
months before it is made public for all researchers to use, a
Regeneron spokeswoman said.
Regeneron, based in Tarrytown, N.Y., is responsible for
sequencing the genes of all 500,000 people, and originally planned
to have the work completed by 2022.
By combining a large volume of genetic data with medical
records, including imaging scans of the brain and other organs, the
database will better enable researchers to search for
disease-causing genes and develop drugs that attack the disease,
George D. Yancopoulos, Regeneron's president and chief scientific
officer, said in an interview. In addition, by better understanding
the genetic causes of disease, companies will be able to better
predict whether their drugs will work in clinical trials and
improve their research and development productivity, he said.
"This is an incredible treasure trove, and that's why this
deserved to go out there to other companies and the public so that
everybody can take advantage of it," Dr. Yancopoulos said. "This is
going to be a great contribution to all mankind, that all of us
will be using for years to come."
When the project was first announced last year, the U.K. Biobank
said it expected the cost of sequencing genes for all 500,000
patients to be about $150 million.
GlaxoSmithKline declined to participate in the second phase of
the research project, Regeneron said. A GlaxoSmithKline spokeswoman
said the company is instead pursuing a project to sequence the
genomes, or entire set of DNA, for the 500,000 patients in the U.K.
Biobank. Glaxo said in December that it would invest GBP40 million
($54.3 million) in the project and other research initiatives, but
hasn't said when it expects to complete it.
The Regeneron-led project will sequence each person's exome --
the 1% to 2% of a person's genes where the majority of known
genetic mutations reside.
A Regeneron spokeswoman said it would release the data to the
public in batches of 50,000 to 100,000 samples beginning as early
as this year, and make the entirety of the data public by 2020.
"Modern drug discovery and development must include human
genetic data, and there's no current richer resource than that
provided through this effort," John Maraganore, chief executive of
Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, said in a written statement. The data
"will greatly enhance Alnylam's target identification and
validation efforts."
Government-funded academics and researchers perform most
research into the genetic causes of disease. In 2015, the National
Institutes of Health announced a project called the Precision
Medicine Initiative, which aimed to recruit one million volunteers
in the U.S. to provide their health records and some genetic data
by the end of 2019. Thus far, the project has enrolled more than
14,000 participants, according to the NIH.
Regeneron began doing large-scale genetic sequencing in 2014,
and last year sequenced the genes of more than 250,000 people, the
company says. The company employs 50 to 100 people who work on its
sequencing projects, most of whom work on analytics and
computational analysis of the data. The company has largely
robotized and automated the work of preparing samples for testing,
Dr. Yancopoulos said.
Write to Joseph Walker at joseph.walker@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 08, 2018 07:14 ET (12:14 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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