Open Targets consortium welcomes Genentech as newest member
Open Targets announces that Genentech will become the seventh partner in the drug discovery and validation consortium
Open Targets. Credit: Karen Arnott/EMBL-EBI
Genentech, a member of the Roche group, has joined the Open Targets consortium. Genentech is the second company to join the industry-academic partnership this year and will collaborate with other consortium members including EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), the Wellcome Sanger Institute, GSK, Bristol Myers Squibb, Sanofi, and Pfizer.
Clinical trials are much more likely to succeed if the therapies tested are backed by genetic evidence. Open Targets was founded in 2014 with the aim of using the information generated by genetic sequencing and genomics studies to systematically improve the selection of targets for drug development.
Target identification and prioritisation
Open Targets partners collaborate on innovative experimental and informatics projects, working pre-competitively to bridge the gap between pharmaceutical companies and not-for-profit research institutes. Using systematic, large-scale experimental and informatics approaches, Open Targets projects identify causal links between targets, biological pathways, and disease.
“Genentech is an excellent fit for Open Targets,” said Ian Dunham, Director of Open Targets. “Their thinking on the value of large scale genetics and genomics approaches in target identification and prioritisation is very compatible with the consortium, and we are already looking forward to working together on existing projects and developing more exciting new projects in our focus areas.”
Working in partnership
Open Targets addresses all aspects of human health and disease, with a particular focus on immunology and inflammation, oncology, and neurodegeneration research. The partnership is committed to rapid publication to openly share experimental data, informatics methods, and other knowledge generated by the consortium with the broader scientific community.
“Open Targets brings a team of multidisciplinary scientists together to work in partnership on projects that no one partner could do alone,” said Gosia Trynka, Experimental Science Director of Open Targets and Group Leader at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. “Welcoming Genentech into our community, sharing our research with them, and learning from their approaches will strengthen our exploration of new targets and biology that can lead to novel, safe and effective medicines.”
Open Targets is a pre-competitive, public-private partnership that uses human genetics and genomics data to systematically identify and prioritise drug targets. Through large-scale genomic experiments and the development of innovative computational techniques, the partnership aims to help researchers select the best targets for the development of new therapies.
Founded in 2014, Open Targets brings together the world-class expertise of EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute and the Wellcome Sanger Institute with the drug discovery capabilities of leading industry partners, currently GSK, BMS, Sanofi, Pfizer, and Genentech. The consortium also collaborates globally to engage with expertise and capabilities aligned with its mission.
