South Korea to Use Affymetrix Arrays in Large Genome-Wide Association Study

The South Korean government will use Affymetrix's microarray technology in a large human genome-wide association study to identify genetic causes of "lifestyle-related" complex diseases that are prevalent in the country, the frm said today.

 

The Korean Association Resource project, also known as KARE, is commissioned by Korea's National Institute of Health and its Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Affy said.

 

The project will use Affy's SNP Array 5.0 to generate genotypes from more than 10,000 human samples in order to discover genes that are associated with adverse drug responses or other complex disorders.

 

It "will enable us to uncover the genes associated with diseases such as metabolic syndrome that affect many individuals in Korea," said Bermseok Oh, chief of the KNIH's Division of Structural and Functional Genomics.

 

Affy said KARE will make the information drawn from the studies available as part of a database that may be used by other researchers.

 

Affy's South Korean supplier SeouLin Bioscience will provide the microarray technology and support the KNIH, and DNA Link, an Affymetrix service provider, will run the microarray research in its high-throughput lab.

 

"The technology will provide [KNIH] with a more unbiased and comprehensive view of genetic information relating to the Korean population," said DNA Link CEO Jong-Eun Lee.

  

According to Affy, the KARE project, which will use samples from the prospective epidemiological Ansan and Ansung cohorts in Korea, is comparable to the SNP Health Association Resource project, which is also using Affymetrix technology to identify genetic variants associated with heart, lung, blood, and sleep disorders.

 

The SHARE project is currently analyzing more than 9,000 samples collected by the US National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and Boston University for the Framingham Heart Study.

 

Source from GenomeWeb Daily News