By Clinical Informatics News Staff

April 22, 2016 Human Longevity, Inc. (HLI), has announced a 10-year deal with AstraZeneca to sequence and analyze up to 500,000 DNA samples from AstraZeneca clinical trials. The genomic insights from the collaboration will be added to the HLI Knowledgebase, a 2016 Bio-IT World Best Practices Award winner. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.  

AstraZeneca will share up to 500,000 DNA samples with Human Longevity, Inc., collected under optional informed consent in AstraZenenca's clinical trials over the course of the collaboration. HLI will sequence the genomes from these samples and from future samples donated over the next 10 years by patients in AstraZeneca's trials. These data will be shared with AstraZeneca who will also gain access to HLI's unique database, the HLI Knowledgebase.

HLI plans to have at least 1 million integrated health records with genome, molecular and clinical data by 2020, HLI’s Chief Information Officer, Yaron Turpaz, told Bio-IT World last year. In a keynote address earlier this month, Turpaz said that HLI already has 22,000 genomes.

In the announcement, HLI said AstraZeneca will work with its world-leading machine learning, pattern recognition and analytical techniques to interpret the genomic data.

"We are excited to establish this long term relationship with AstraZeneca who are now establishing themselves as a leader in genomic-focused research," said J. Craig Venter, Ph.D., Co-founder and CEO, HLI in a press release. "We look forward to working together to use HLI's proprietary computational methods and genomic data insights to better inform clinical trials and drug development."

The HLI Knowledgebase is a key tool in the company's portfolio to transform how medicine is practiced. The Knowledgebase contains tens of thousands of high-quality samples with genomic and phenotypic data and can be used to help customers streamline drug development, aid in discovery of biomarker and companion diagnostics, and rescue and repurpose drugs from failed clinical trials.