Anuva, based in India, recently partnered with American genomics and viral surveillance company Helix to kick off the next stage of growth of its Genomic Bio / Data Bank, according to a press release.
“We are excited to partner with Helix as their expertise in genomics sequencing for large-scale populations, which together with our recent closure of series A funding will allow us to accelerate our plans to create the most diverse Genomic Bio / Data Bank much quicker than ever before,” Abhishek Kumar, director at Anuva said.
Under the terms of the strategic agreement, Anuva will be tasked with researching and garnering new information about health and disease and promoting “drug discovery through the identification of novel targets” to improve the general efficiency of medical treatments for under-represented social groups.
Anuva’s proprietary Genomic Bio / Data Bank, on the other hand, incorporates genomic data, strongly phenotyped participants and a biorepository from diverse Asian subpopulations, through which the company will develop a large, Asia-based multi-population dataset.
“Anuva is doing great work to close the critical data diversity gap in genomics for drug discovery,” said Daniel Lee, senior vice president of life sciences and growth at Helix. “We’re thrilled to be able to provide Anuva access to our whole exome assay as they enter their next stage of growth.”
Through the collaboration, Helix hopes to leverage its technology and translational research methods. The venture also serves as a guide toward the evolution of technology related to global genomics.
“Helix’s proprietary Exome+ assay will provide Anuva higher coverage on clinically relevant genes and a whole genome backbone enabling tens of millions of imputed variants as well as the full mitochondrial genome,” a recent press release explains.