GlaxoSmithKline and Regeneron announce new collaboration with UK Biobank

GlaxoSmithKline has announced a new partnership with the UK Biobank and the Regeneron Genetics Center.

The collaboration will generate genetic sequence data from the 500,000 volunteer participants in the UK Biobank resource, which has been collecting anonymised information and samples over the past ten years.

This will enable researchers to gain new genetic insights to support advances in the development of new medicines for a range of serious and life-threatening diseases. It has been shown that medicines developed with human genetic evidence have substantially higher success rates.

GlaxoSmithKline and Regeneron have committed an initial investment to enable the sequencing of the first 50,000 samples, which will take place at the Regeneron Genetics Center in New York and will be completed before the end of 2017.

The sequencing of all 500,000 samples in the UK Biobank is expected to take three to five years.

Patrick Vallance, president for research and development at GlaxoSmithKline said: "I believe that we are in a new era of drug discovery because of a fundamental change in our understanding of human biology, driven largely by advances in human genetics."

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