Regeneron Genetics Center LLC, the genomics business and wholly owned subsidiary of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc., will collaborate on family-based genetics research with three academic institutions.
Officials at Regeneron headquarters in Greenburgh today also announced the appointments of a new physician executive and a scientific advisory board chairman at Regeneron Genetics.
Launched last January, the genetics center on the Landmark at Eastview biotech campus has sequenced de-identified DNA samples from more than 10,000 people, leveraging laboratory automation and cloud computing to process data at a rate exceeding 50,000 unique samples per year, Regeneron officials said.
The RGC has formed research collaborations with Columbia University Medical Center in Manhattan, the Clinic for Special Children in Strasburg, Penn., and Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
Regeneron scientists will work with Columbia to study the genetic basis of familial diseases, such as inherited cardiometabolic diseases, familial cancer predisposition and rare genetic diseases. The collaboration with the Clinic for Special Children will study the genetic basis of early-onset and familial forms of pediatric disorders in Amish and Mennonite populations. Regeneron will work with Baylor to study the function of Mendelian disease genes ”“ single genes in which mutations cause disease ”“ discovered by the Baylor Center for Mendelian Genomics.
Regeneron said the new collaborations build on the center”™s existing partnerships with the National Human Genome Research Institute”™s Undiagnosed Diseases Program and the Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania in large-scale family- and population-based genetics research.
Regeneron also announced that Dr. Alan Shuldiner has joined the Regeneron Genetics Center as vice president of translational genetics. Shuldiner previously was associate dean and director of the Program for Personalized and Genomic Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
Dr. Richard Lifton has been named chairman of the Regeneron Genetics Center”™s new scientific advisory board. Lifton is a professor of genetics, professor of nephrology medicine and chairman of the genetics department at Yale University and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Md.
