North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System to Use Illumina Whole-Genome Genotyping Solutions to Support Study of Inflammatory Bowel Disease
6:00 AM EST January 12, 2006
Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ: ILMN) announced today that the NIDDK(1) Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) Genetics Consortium will utilize the Sentrix(R) HumanHap300 BeadChips and Infinium(TM) assay reagents to genotype over 2000 case-control samples for a genome-wide study designed to help identify genetic variants that increase susceptibility to Crohn's disease (CD). Principal Investigator of the Data Coordinating Center, Judy Cho, M.D., Associate Professor of Medicine, Section of Gastroenterology at the University of Chicago Hospitals, is leading the IBD study. Dr. Cho and colleagues have assembled a well-characterized collection of disease samples and will perform the data analysis.
The genotyping will be performed at The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, part of the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, under the direction of Peter K. Gregersen, M.D., Head of the Robert S. Boas Center for Genomics and Human Genetics at The Feinstein. One thousand control individuals will be typed as part of the study, and the control genotypes will be made available to the scientific community. "We feel that the rapid release of individual level genotypes for control populations will benefit the community of scientists who are working on complex genetic diseases," stated Dr. Gregersen. "We are delighted to work with the NIDDK IBD Genetics Consortium and Illumina to make these data available in the context of this project."
IBD is a chronic, progressive disease with poorly understood etiology or cause. It is estimated that over 2 million patients suffer from some form of the disease in North America. Symptoms most commonly include chronic inflammation, and disease onset for both Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC), two major forms of IBD, often occurs in adolescence and early adulthood. Crohn's symptoms occur most frequently where the small and large intestines meet; UC is more typically associated with the large intestine and rectum. Because of the body's irregular immune response to IBD, it is widely believed that the condition causes inflammation problems in other parts of the body including joints (arthritis), the eyes and the liver. IBD patients also exhibit increased risk of colon cancer.
Dr. Gregersen and his team will conduct the sample genotyping on an automated Illumina BeadStation using the Sentrix HumanHap300 BeadChip that can query over 317,000 tagSNPs on a single microarray device. The new BeadChip is powered by Illumina's Infinium assay, which enables the intelligent selection and analysis of virtually any SNP in the genome. The high statistical value of the SNP loci in the HumanHap300 enables researchers to achieve the broadest genomic coverage of any array on the market. The HumanHap300 delivers industry-leading data quality, with call rates exceeding 99%, and reproducibility and Mendelian accuracy both greater than 99.9%.
"We're delighted that the NIDDK IBD Genetics Consortium has selected Illumina technologies for this important study, said Jay Flatley, Illumina President and CEO. "We are also very pleased to work once again with Peter Gregersen and to support his vision for making control genotyping data available to the scientific community."
About The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research
Located in Manhasset, NY, and part of the North Shore-Long Island Jewish (LIJ) Health System, The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research (www.FeinsteinInstitute.org) is among the top six percent of all institutions that receive funding from the National Institutes of Health. Building on its strengths in immunology and inflammation, oncology and cell biology, genomics and human genetics, and neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders, its goal is to understand the biological processes that underlie various diseases and translate this knowledge into new tools for diagnosis and treatment.
About Illumina
Illumina (www.illumina.com) develops and markets next-generation tools for the large-scale analysis of genetic variation and function. The Company's proprietary BeadArray technology -- used in leading genomics centers around the world -- provides the throughput, cost effectiveness and flexibility necessary to enable researchers in the life sciences and pharmaceutical industries to perform the billions of tests necessary to extract medically valuable information from advances in genomics and proteomics. This information will help pave the way to personalized medicine by correlating genetic variation and gene function with particular disease states, enhancing drug discovery, allowing diseases to be detected earlier and more specifically, and permitting better choices of drugs for individual patients. For more information about the HumanHap300 BeadChip, visit: illumina.com .
"Safe Harbor" Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: this release may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Among the important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in any forward-looking statements are the costs and outcome of Illumina's litigation with Affymetrix, the Company's ability to scale and integrate CyVera technology, the ability to further scale oligo synthesis output and technology to satisfy market demand deriving from the Company's collaboration with Invitrogen, Illumina's ability to further develop and commercialize its BeadArray technologies and to deploy new gene expression and genotyping products and applications for its platform technology, to manufacture robust Sentrix(R) arrays and Oligator(R) oligonucleotides, and other factors detailed in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission including its recent filings on Forms 10-K and 10-Q or in information disclosed in public conference calls, the date and time of which are released beforehand. Illumina disclaims any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements beyond the date of this release.
Reference
1. NIDDK: National Institute of Diabetes & Digestive & Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
SOURCE: Illumina, Inc.
Illumina, Inc. Jay Flatley, 858-202-4501 jflatley@illumina.com William Craumer, 858-202-4667 bcraumer@illumina.com |
