Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ: ILMN), and Nashville Biosciences, LLC (NashBio), today announced Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: ALNY) (Alnylam) as a member of the Alliance for Genomic Discovery (AGD). Alnylam, a pioneer in RNA interference (RNAi) therapeutics, will utilize the AGD clinical genomic database to derive real-world insights and accelerate drug target discovery.
“We welcome Alnylam to the AGD as our members continue to leverage data that fuels innovation in novel therapeutics to improve lives of patients everywhere,” said Todd Christian, senior vice president of Services, Arrays and Genomic Access at Illumina. “Alnylam’s decision to join the alliance speaks to the immense value of this resource that combines powerful scale and depth of sequencing with clinical data quality and diverse ancestral representation to advance the critical work of our biopharma partners.”
Alnylam is the ninth member of the alliance, joining AbbVie, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Bayer, Bristol Myers Squibb, GSK, Merck, and Novo Nordisk. Alnylam’s partnership will further strengthen the AGD clinical genomic database, enabling additional investment to sequence and analyze a new set of 31,250 whole-genomes to be added to the alliance’s already groundbreaking 250,000 whole-genome cohort.
RNAi therapeutics function by “silencing” genes that cause or contribute to disease, working upstream of traditional treatment approaches. The AGD’s dataset will provide a valuable resource for Alnylam scientists who hunt for new therapeutic targets.
“We are excited to join the Alliance for Genomic Discovery and contribute to the expansion of this important dataset, while simultaneously mining it for insights,” said Paul Nioi, senior vice president of Research at Alnylam. “We rely on human genetics to guide us as we discover and develop RNAi therapeutics with the potential to change medicine. The AGD dataset will bolster our ability to identify therapeutic targets that are relevant to patients from many different backgrounds.
