Westborough, Mass. – GenomeQuest, the global leader in sequence data management, today announced the appointment of Dr. Henk Heus to the newly established position of Scientific Lead of GQ-PMR. A recently announced innovation and collaboration program, GQ-PMR helps pharmaceutical firms collectively accelerate their transition to molecular-based, personalized medicine research (PMR).

“I am honored and enthused to accept this position in GQ-PMR,” said Dr. Heus. “Mostly, I am excited to be working with top pharma to leverage the advances and help them realize immense gains from many years of industry commitment to genomics. Specifically, we believe that the combination of next generation sequencing, the GenomeQuest sequence database engine, Moore’s Law, and methods from this collaboration will make PMR immediately achievable and broadly scalable for member companies.”

The initial phase of GQ-PMR offers members a single, aggregated database of public genetic and variation datasets; multi-genome analysis (MGA) software for comparing and querying whole-genomes across multiple datasets and projects; and collaboration with other member pharmas on pre-competitive PMR methodologies. Top areas of application include oncology discovery, population studies, clinical stratification, pharmacogenomics, and enterprise-wide variation databases.

A leading expert in genomic use cases and methodologies for personalized medicine, Dr. Heus will manage the program’s steering committee and collaborative sessions. He is joined by GenomeQuest Scientific Advisors Dr. Richard K. Wilson, Professor of Genetics, and Director of The Genome Center at Washington University School of Medicine, and Dr. Mark Boguski, from the Department of Pathology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and the Harvard Medical School Center for Biomedical Informatics.

Dr. Heus holds a PhD in human genetics from the Erasmus Medical Center, Department of Clinical Genetics. With over 15 years experience in genomics, including at NV Organon/Akzo Nobel, he brings expertise and invention from all fields critical to GQ-PMR and its members: the pure science of genomics, its application to research and clinical work, the incorporation of large genomic datasets and multi-genome analysis to realize comparative biology, and the underlying software and hardware informatics infrastructure to enable and support PMR.

About GenomeQuest

GenomeQuest, the global leader in sequence data management, helps life science organizations realize the full promise of genomics. Over 160 leading health and agriculture companies use GenomeQuest for mission-critical work, including nine of the top ten pharmaceuticals. The core technology of the company is the GQ-Engine — a sequence database engine that is purpose-built for storing, managing, and analyzing sequence data at whole- and multi-genome scale.