Personalis, Inc., founded in 2011, based in Silicon Valley, a provider of advanced genomic sequencing and analytics for immuno-oncology, has announced an extension to their contract with the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to sequence a further 34,000 whole human genomes for the VA’s Million Veteran Program (MVP). This brings the total of all Personalis contracts from the MVP to almost 80,000 human genomes.
Personalis, Inc. is a leading precision medicine company focused on advanced Next Generation Sequencing (NGS)-based services for immuno-oncology and cancer for clinical trials and translational research.
The Personalis ACE Exome and Transcriptome technology is designed to obtain the most comprehensive and accurate tumor molecular profile and each tumor’s unique immune microenvironment for immuno-oncology applications.
The company’s Clinical Laboratory is good practice “GxP” aligned as well as Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA)’88 and College of American Pathologists (CAP) accredited. Personalis is differentiated by advanced sequencing assays, algorithms and content for neoantigen characterization, customer regulatory support, and more.
Launched in 2011, MVP is a landmark research effort aimed at better understanding how genetic variations affect health. Up to a million Veterans are expected to enroll in the VA study by 2021. Data and genetic samples collected through the program are stored securely and made available for studies by authorized researchers, with stringent safeguards in place to protect Veterans’ private health information.
MVP is now enrolling at 63 VA medical centers US-wide. The VA’s central biorepository is equipped with a state-of-the-art robotic system for DNA extraction and storage and is currently being expanded to support up to 4 million samples. With about 700,000 enrollees to date, MVP already far exceeds the enrollment numbers of any single VA study or research program in the past, and is in fact one of the largest research cohorts of its kind in the world.
MVP provides researchers with a rich resource of genetic, health, lifestyle, and military-exposure data collected from questionnaires, medical records, and genetic analyses. By combining this information into a single database, MVP promises to advance knowledge about the complex links between genes and health. Veterans’ privacy and confidentiality are top priorities in MVP, as in all VA research.
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