Danville, Pa.-based Geisinger Health System is collaborating with a pharmaceutical company to study how genes determine human health.
Geisinger's five-year collaboration with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals will include one of the largest U.S. populations of participants for a study of this kind. Geisinger plans to collect samples from more than 100,000 consented patient volunteers. Regeneron's genetics center and its researchers will then perform sequencing and genotyping on the samples.
David H. Ledbetter, PhD, Geisinger's executive vice president and chief scientific officer, said the collaboration has the potential to provide Geisinger with tools to improve its ability to foresee diseases before the onset of symptoms and diagnose chronic and potentially fatal conditions before it's too late to intervene.
"Research is a core part of Geisinger's mission, and there is no more important medical research being done today than in genomics," Geisinger Health President and CEO Glenn D. Steele Jr., MD, PhD, said in the release. "The combination of Geisinger and Regeneron brings together a unique set of assets and expertise that allow us to conduct research of this size and scope. I believe the long term benefits to human health and patient care will be tremendous."
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