Mapping rare disease and cancer genes: competition winners
2 May 2014 04:27 PM
Winners from a £10 million competition to
help businesses develop new technology to map and analyse genes have been
announced.
Eight companies were successful and will share a total
of £1.6 million. The winners will use this funding from phase 1 of the
competition to demonstrate the technical feasibility of their innovative
proposals or early stage prototypes that will help to treat rare diseases and
cancer.
A
further £8 million will be made available in phase 2 of the competition
to those companies who are judged to have the best products once they have been
developed and tested.
The
successful companies are:
- Aridhia Informatics Limited
- Arkivum Limited
- Congenica Limited
- Eagle Genomics Limited
- Genomics Limited (2 successful bids)
- Omixon Gene Technology
- Oxford Gene Technology
- Seven Bridges Genomics UK Limited
The
competition, funded by the Department of Health through the Small Business Research
Initiative and managed by Genomics England,
supports the efforts to map 100,000 whole genomes (or entire DNA) of NHS
patients with cancer or a rare disease by 2017. The products developed as part
of this competition will help to play an important part in reaching this
goal.
Health Minister Lord Howe said:
I
am delighted that the competition I launched in December has produced such a
strong set of winners. The involvement of innovative and pioneering companies
to help us sequence 100,000 whole genomes of NHS patients with cancer or a rare
disease is essential if we are to gain much more understanding into how
diseases work and how we can treat them more effectively.
The
share of funding these companies will receive from the competition will enable
them to develop their products much more quickly and help them grow which will
in turn help cancer and rare disease patients who have consented to having
their whole genome sequenced.
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