BGI and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia partner to expand one of the largest genomic data generation efforts for pediatric cancers and structural birth defects

PHILADELPHIA, PA – Global genomics leader BGI is collaborating with the Gabriella Miller Kids First Data Resource Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) on a new pediatric research initiative to understand the genetic causes of and links between childhood cancer and structural birth defects.

Through BGI’s support, more than 1,000 whole genome sequences per year will be contributed to the Kids First Data Resource Portal, also being announced today, and integrated with NIH-funded disease cohorts generated under the Gabriella Miller Kids First Program. The commitment builds upon BGI’s support of the China National GeneBank (CNGB)’s participation in the Children’s Brain Tumor Tissue Consortium (CBTTC), a collaborative pediatric brain tumor research effort across 16 US and international-based institutions which is also contributing data into the Kids First Data Resource Portal.

The Kids First Data Resource Portal hosts data from approximately 8,000 DNA and RNA samples from children affected with cancer or structural birth defects and their families, and it is expected to grow to include more than 30,000 total samples. The portal seeks to meet the needs of patients, researchers, and clinicians by partnering together to create one of the largest data resources for pediatric genomic data. It also provides the necessary tools and computational resources for analysis and interpretation of these complex data.

BGI’s data generation commitment to the Gabriella Miller Kids First Data Resource Center (Kids First DRC) will continue for at least three years. BGI supported data will be integrated with other datasets within the Kids First Data Resource Center’s collaborative cloud-based discovery platforms, enabling scientists around the world to advance personalized medicine for the detection, therapy, and management of childhood cancer and structural birth defects.

“BGI’s commitment to supporting large-scale pediatric data generation for inclusion in the Gabriella Miller Kids First Data Resource Portal exemplifies our shared vision of working together to put kids first through private-public partnerships,” said Dr. Adam Resnick, PhD, lead principal investigator of the Gabriella Miller Kids First DRC and Director of the Center for Data Driven Discovery at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s Division of Neurosurgery. “BGI is partnering to accelerate discoveries for all children suffering from cancer or a structural birth defect around the globe, leveraging BGI’s sequencing platforms and large scale-data generation capacity. The Gabriella Miller Kids First DRC is excited and grateful to have BGI’s commitment and expertise support the pediatric research landscape in such a significant way to accelerate research through empowered data generation and collaborative discovery. ”

BGI and CHOP will work collaboratively with disease experts and other Kids First DRC  commitment makers to advance analysis and interpretation of data, performing bioinformatics or other analysis for datasets associated with diseases addressed by Kids First, and on the improvement of analytic workflows and their implementation in cloud-based resources.

“We are excited to build upon our existing relationship with CBTTC and establish new collaborations with the Gabriella Miller Kids First DRC, which together with other partners will greatly advance research in pediatric cancer and structural birth defects, and ultimately bring new therapies to children in great need,” said Charles Bao, PhD, General Manager of BGI Americas, a subsidiary of BGI Genomics. “The efforts align with BGI’s mission of improving global human health through omics technology innovation, and BGI is proud to contribute to this initiative. By collaborating with the Kids First DRC and partners from leading academic and medical institutions in the Kids First program, we are confident the work will make a substantial impact to children around the globe.”

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Common Fund’s Gabriella Miller Kids First Pediatric ResearchProgram was initiated in response to the 2014 Gabriella Miller Kids First Pediatric Research Act. The Gabriella Miller Kids First Program is primarily led by The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), The National Cancer Institute (NCI), The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) and The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI). Additionally, these institutes work in partnership with the Office of the NIH Director and with additional involvement of several other key NIH institutes and centers.

ABOUT BGI

BGI was founded in 1999 with the vision of using genomics to benefit mankind and has since become one of the largest genomics organizations in the world. With a focus on research and applications in the healthcare, pharmaceutical, conservation and environmental fields, BGI has a proven track record of innovative, high profile research that has generated over 1,600 publications. BGI was ranked first in academic collaboration in the Nature Index in 2017 for its numerous successful partnerships with researchers. Since its inception, BGI has contributed to many large-scale international genomics initiatives, such as the Human Genome Project, the International Cancer Genome Consortium, the International HapMap Project, Metagenomics of the Human Intestinal Tract (MetaHIT) project, Synthetic Yeast 2.0, and others.