Illumina, Macrogen Collaborate on Korean Genome Effort

Original from: genomeweb

Illumina and Macrogen announced on Monday that they are collaborating to sequence and analyze 145,952 genomes as part of South Korea's National Bio Big Data project.

Financial and other details were not disclosed.

The project began in South Korea in 2020 and has so far sequenced approximately 20,000 genomes. It aims to enroll about 772,000 participants by 2028 and to integrate the clinical information, public health data, and genomic data of one million South Korean genomes by 2032. Data generated as part of this project is expected to become available for research purposes to universities, hospitals, and other research institutions beginning in 2026.

Other participating companies include DNA Link, Theragen Bio, and CG Invites.

"We look forward to contributing to Korea by bringing our expertise and lessons learned from our direct involvement in leading pop gen projects around the world," Robert McBride, general manager for Illumina in Korea, said in a statement.

McBride commented that although population genome projects are growing worldwide, most genome datasets remain dominated by individuals of European descent. "This means we have a lot of information how to develop drugs for European populations but doesn’t translate in any meaningful way to other nationalities," McBride said.

This is slowly changing however, with nations around the globe steadily launching national genomics projects over the past several years.

The United Arab Emirates, for example, launched its national Emirati Genome Project (EGP) in 2021. Earlier this year, the nation initiated a mandatory national premarital genetic screening program of over 840 autosomal recessive diseases, stemming from EGP-related efforts.

Similarly, public and private institutions are advancing a number of population genomics projects across Africa.

Source: Illumina, Macrogen Collaborate on Korean Genome Effort