MedGenome Selects Applied Biosystems Axiom Genotyping Platform to Enable Large-scale Genetic Studies in South Asian Populations

FOSTER CITY, California, Nov. 18, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- MedGenome, a global leader in personalized medicine, announced the development of a proprietary genotyping array to efficiently enable large-scale genetic studies focused on South Asian populations. The South Asian Research Genotyping Array by MedGenome ("SARGAM") will be optimized for capturing the unique variants found in South Asian genomes, leveraging MedGenome's proprietary database of 2.5 million variants that are unique to the South Asian population, and not available in any publicly available genetic database. SARGAM will be an ideal tool for accelerating the growth of MedGenome's rapidly expanding database of South Asian variants as well as to enable discovery research involving South Asian population cohorts. The Applied Biosystems Axiom platform has proven itself as a technology adaptable to large-scale individualized genotyping solutions and MedGenome is proud to select it as a platform.

MedGenome will utilize sequence data generated in its facility in Bengaluru and Thermo Fisher's capabilities in developing imputation aware array design and bioinformatics pipelines to identify unique content for SARGAM. SARGAM will help researchers better understand disease origins and improve human health by enabling the creation of new or improved diagnostics and medicines. It will also be a better tool for consumer genomics solutions like ancestry and pharmacogenomics for the South Asian population. SARGAM will be deployed in MedGenome's facility in India in conjunction with Thermo Fisher's new high throughput Axiom workflow that is targeted to fast-growing laboratories and offers scalability to millions of samples.

"After reviewing available global microarray platforms for population-scale studies, we selected Thermo Fisher Scientific' Axiom platform for our genotyping service for their best-in-class bioinformatics and array design," said Dr. Andy Peterson, Chief Scientific Officer for MedGenome. "The pairing of this South Asian array with MedGenome's high-throughput genomics sequencing and data analysis capabilities and their large network of collaborations with hospitals and physicians across India puts MedGenome in a unique position to drive discovery."