Bionano Genomics to Support Largest Study to Date on COVID-19 Disease Susceptibility

Bionano Genomics, Rescale, Amazon Web Services, and Genoox are donating consumables and compute resources to this effort based in Hannover, Germany

SAN DIEGO, March 31, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bionano Genomics, Inc. (Nasdaq: BNGO)  announced today the launch of the largest study to date aiming to identify genomic variants and novel active substances that influence resistance or sensitivity to the SARS-CoV2 virus, or COVID-19, disease progression and drug response. A variety of genomic and other biological variables will be compared between those patients who show no or mild symptoms and those who show severe illness. The study will control for viral strain differences, and for the known risk factors of age and chronic illness such as heart disease, diabetes, or other immune-compromising disease.

The first study of this kind is underway in Wuhan, China, and is being performed at the site of Wuhan-based GrandOmics, a service provider using Bionano technology. Now, the Hannover Medical School is launching a study involving 1,000 patients and controls, consisting of COVID-19 patients and their partners and first-degree relatives as controls. Partners have typically been intensely exposed to the same strain of the virus as the patients, and differences in disease severity can be caused by genetic variation. The participants will have their genomes analyzed using Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS), and Bionano Genome Imaging. Additionally, the study participants will undergo analysis of their transcriptome to look at gene expression, their metabolome, and a variety of immune markers such as cytokines and T-cell response. The goal of the study is to identify genomic variants that affect the disease, and immune or metabolic variables in the healthier participants that can protect against more severe disease, and to use this knowledge for the development of novel therapies and vaccines.

The study involves the teams of Dr. Doris Steinemann and Dr. Thomas Illig, who are part of the Resolving Infection Susceptibility (RESIST) Cluster which specifically focuses on the study of genomic variants that protect or predispose to infectious disease. They recently purchased Bionano’s Saphyr instrument and will be analyzing the study participant samples using the Saphyr System.

A number of companies have committed to supporting this study as part of a global Tech Against Covid initiative. Bionano is donating the consumables needed to analyze the structural variants in the samples. Rescale, the High-Performance Computing cloud platform fully integrated with Saphyr, and Amazon Web Services (AWS), a leading provider of on-demand cloud computing, are donating compute time for the Bionano data analysis. Genoox, the platform for annotation and classification of genomic variants, will donate their compute resources to analyze the NGS data combined with Bionano’s structural variation calls for an integrated analysis of small and large genomic variants.