India, UK Based Biotech Company Anuva Partners With US Genomics Giant

This partnership between Anuva and Helix from the US will be crucial in advancing research into Asian genomics.

A UK-backed genomics biotech company with a laboratory in India, Anuva, has partnered with Helix, a global leader in population genomics and viral surveillance companies in the United States.

Anuva was formerly known as the Global Gene Corp believes it will now enter the next stage of its growth which focuses on creating a diverse genomic bio/data bank which will help in enhancing disease treatment potential.

As per reports from PTI, Anuva has begun to uncover findings that would be valuable to India and hopes that the new partnership with Helix would aid in furthering the research.

"We are excited to partner with Helix as their expertise in genomics sequencing for large-scale populations, which together with our recent closure of Series A funding will allow us to accelerate our plans to create the most diverse Genomic Bio/Data Bank much quicker than ever before."

Abhishek Kumar, Director at Anuva

With the nucleus of its operations based in India, Anuva is supported by a Cambridge-based bioinformatics centre in the UK. The company also claims that it is creating the most diverse Genomic Bio/Data Bank of Asian populations which is being utilised for research and development in the global pharmaceutical sector.

As per reports from PTI, the knowledge gained and generated by Anuva on health and disease will be directly applicable to treatments. It will especially be beneficial to diverse under-represented populations. It will be able to accelerate drug discoveries by identifying novel targets and pathways with the underlying mission of "providing better health for all."

With the tie-up with Helix, the company can leverage the genomics giant's in-depth expertise in sequencing technology and translational research.

Anuva will be able to leverage Helix's proprietary Exome+ assay and create a larger coverage on clinically relevant genes and a complete genome backbone which would enable tens of millions of imputed variants in addition to the full mitochondrial genome.

Moreover, with its own proprietary Genomic Bio/Data Bank, Anuva hopes to build the largest multi-population dataset from Asia.

Anuva's partnership with Helix is a crucial step towards attaining a full potential of genomics to the global population, according to experts in biotech.

(With inputs from PTI)