Seqera partners with Genomics England to enhance genomic research capabilities
BARCELONA/LONDON, 25.05.23: Seqera, the leading provider of secure workflow orchestration software in the life sciences sector, has partnered with Genomics England, the government-owned company that launched the 100,000 Genomes Project in partnership with the NHS. The new collaboration between Seqera and Genomics England will enable whole genome analysis to be carried out at a larger scale with greater efficiency, helping more patients benefit from genomic healthcare and equipping researchers with extra data to find the causes of disease and develop new treatments.
Building on the UK’s reputation as a global leader in life sciences, Genomics England is working with the NHS to deliver whole genome sequencing as part of the NHS Genomic Medicine Service for patients with rare diseases and cancer. The data collected by Genomics England is stored in the National Genomic Research Library and can be accessed by approved researchers via a secure research environment enabling them to deliver groundbreaking insights into both therapeutics and diagnostics, and has been used by scientists to propose updated global guidelines to improve rare disease diagnosis.
The partnership with Seqera will scale Genomics England’s capacity to develop models for disease diagnosis, prognosis and treatment response. Genomics England will deploy Seqera’ Nextflow Tower, an intuitive, centralised command post that enables large-scale collaborative data analysis. With Tower, Genomics England will be able to quickly launch, manage, and monitor scalable data analysis pipelines within the cloud.
Edwin Clark, Senior Product Manager at Genomics England, comments: “At Genomics England our vision is to create a world where everyone can benefit from genomic healthcare. A decade on from the launch of the 100,000 Genomes Project, we’re continuing to work in partnership with the NHS to harness the potential of genomic medicine, connecting research and clinical care at a national scale so we can deliver benefits in diagnosis, treatment, and care for those living with rare conditions and cancer. Using Seqera’ platform as part of our automated system for population-scale genomic analysis will accelerate our pipeline development and enable support for hybrid compute environments, helping us meet future demands and improve resiliency.”
As the demand for personalised medicine to treat diseases such as cancer booms, UK genomics research is helping to provide life-saving therapeutics to patients faster and more efficiently than ever. It is one of the leading markets for this in the world, although genomic medicine is set to transform a growing number of healthcare sectors as its market size is expected to reach USD 62.9 billion by 2028.
Evan Floden, Founder and CEO of Seqera comments: “The impact Genomics England’s work is having through initiatives such as the 100,000 Genomes Project emphasises the importance of genomic research in helping to find diagnoses and develop new treatments. At a time when budgets are stretched and the UK’s health sector recovers from ripple effects of Covid-19’s disruption, providing technology and a service which streamlines budgets and allows for resources to be reinvested into improving people’s treatment is critical and a key pillar of our operation. We are thrilled to be working with Genomics England and look forward to partnering with them in its continued innovation in the genomics sector.”
Notes to editors
About Seqera
Seqera is the leading provider of secure collaborative analytics software in the life sciences sector. It reduces the cost and complexity of working with data en masse, providing the tools to drive innovations in genomics, global health and beyond.
Founded in 2018 by Evan Floden and Paolo Di Tommaso, Seqera is trusted by organisations including AstraZeneca, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Oxford Nanopore and Invitae.
The creator of open-source Nextflow and Tower, it has helped some of the largest pharmaceutical, life sciences and genomics companies worldwide to transform their approach to data analytics and workflow pipelines, allowing them to create products and technologies that benefit us all.
Championing ‘open science’, its experts also act as the stewards of data made public for collaboration from the wider scientific community, with 70 pipelines available for use by its community of 16,000 researchers.
About Genomics England
Genomics England is a global leader in advancing and delivering genomic medicine at scale, for all. Building on our delivery of the 100,000 Genomes Project, we are enabling the world’s first national Whole Genome Sequencing service in the NHS Genomic Medicine Service, delivering the most advanced genomic healthcare today. We maximise the patient and participant benefit of this service by using the same trusted and proven infrastructure and expertise, and consent and governance framework, to support the development of the genomic medicine of tomorrow, together with the NHS, industry, and academia. All this focused on delivering our vision of a world in which everyone benefits from genomics.