Clinical OMICS

MAY-JUN 2017

Healthcare magazine for research scientists, labs, pathologists, hospitals, cancer centers, physicians and biopharma companies providing news articles, expert interviews and videos about molecular diagnostics in precision medicine

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32 Clinical OMICs May/June 2017 www.clinicalomics.com Data & Informatics 23andMe, Grünenthal Collect Data on the Genetics of Pain Ditect to consumer genetic testing company 23andMeand drug devel- oper Grünenthal Group have entered a collaborative study intended to glean insights into the genetics of pain. The partners plan to enroll 20,000 U.S. par- ticipants in the study, which they said will be among the largest of its kind that will combine data on genetics and response to pain, including a pain toler- ance experiment. Emily Drabant Conley, Ph.D., 23andMe VP of business development, added that the study aims to understand genetic factors associated with pain sensitivity, progression, severity, and response to treatments. "Pain is often a unique experience for each individual, and therefore complex to understand and treat. By leveraging large amounts of genetic and pheno- typic data this study may help develop a more personalized approach to pain management," Dr. Conley said. 23andMe will invite eligible genotyped customers who agree to participate in the pain study to provide information about their experience with pain via online surveys the personal genetics company will design with Grünenthal. Fabric, TOMA to Provide End-to- End Tumor Profiling and Reporting Fabric Genomics, a computational genomics company headquartered in Oakland, CA, and TOMA Biosciences, a Foster City, CA-based genomics cancer diagnostics company, announced a partnership to develop an end-to-end genomic testing and clinical interpretation product for somatic cancers. The new system integrates TOMA's oligo selective sequencing (OS-Seq) tech- nology, which was developed at Stanford University, and combines it with Fabric Genomics' bioinformatics platform. "What TOMA does is a very specialized assay to produce the highest qual- ity data from cancer samples," said Martin Reese, Ph.D., chief executive officer, president, and founder of Fabric Genomics, formerly known as Omicia. "We take the result files from that pipeline and connect them with the clinical trial data, then we generate these clinical reports which are customized for clinical oncology customers." These reports provide cancer patients and their physicians with clinically relevant information such as FDA-approved therapy matches and patient-specific profiles of drug resistance. "There are a lot more targeted therapies that are available for oncology patients today, but clinical labs find it quite difficult to figure out which type of reagents and kits they should use to accurately sequence that sample, and take the raw data file and convert that into a clinical report that an oncologist can look at and say, 'okay, now I know what to do with my patient,'" said Ritu Kamal, director, oncology products at Fabric Genomics. "What we're doing with the partnership is providing clinical laboratories an end-to-end solution that gives them all the tools they need to do this entire process." In addition to partnering with TOMA, Fabric Genomics is also applying its software tools in a number of different areas, including genetic testing for heredi- tary diseases, whole genome sequencing in intensive care units, and in traditional genetic testing labs.—Diana Kwon Fabric Genomics staff (from left from right): Charlene Son Rigby (standing), senior vice president, customer operations; Ritu Kamal, director, oncology products; Martin Reese, CEO, president, founder; Vanessa Sawyer, director, global marketing. pixologicstudio / Getty Images (continued on next page)

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