Genomics England partners with Seqera Labs to improve NHS cancer care

The new collaboration will enable whole genome analysis to be carried out at a larger scale with greater efficiency, helping more patients benefit from genomic healthcare and equipping researchers with extra data to find the causes of disease and develop new treatments.

Genomics England, which previously launched the 100,000 Genomes Project, is working with the NHS to deliver whole genome sequencing as part of the NHS Genomic Medicine Service for patients with rare diseases and cancer.

The data collected by Genomics England is stored in the National Genomic Research Library and can be accessed by approved researchers, enabling them to deliver “groundbreaking” insights into both therapeutics and diagnostics.

The information has also been used by scientists to propose updated global guidelines to improve rare disease diagnosis.

The partnership with Seqera will scale Genomics’ capacity to develop models for disease diagnosis, prognosis and treatment response.

Genomics will deploy Seqera's Nextflow Tower, an intuitive, centralised command post that enables large-scale collaborative data analysis. With Tower, the company will be able to quickly launch, manage, and monitor scalable data analysis pipelines within the cloud.

“At Genomics England our vision is to create a world where everyone can benefit from genomic healthcare,” said Edwin Clark, senior product manager at Genomics.

“A decade on from the launch of the 100,000 Genomes Project, we’re continuing to work in partnership with the NHS to harness the potential of genomic medicine, connecting research and clinical care at a national scale so we can deliver benefits in diagnosis, treatment, and care for those living with rare conditions and cancer.

“Using Seqera Labs’ platform as part of our automated system for population-scale genomic analysis will accelerate our pipeline development and enable support for hybrid compute environments, helping us meet future demands and improve resiliency.”

Evan Floden, CEO and founder of Seqera Labs added: “The impact Genomics England’s work is having through initiatives such as the 100,000 Genomes Project emphasises the importance of genomic research in helping to find diagnoses and develop new treatments."

“At a time when budgets are stretched and the UK’s health sector recovers from ripple effects of Covid-19’s disruption, providing technology and a service which streamlines budgets and allows for resources to be reinvested into improving people’s treatment is critical and a key pillar of our operation.”