Mount Sinai Strikes Genomics Partnership to Enhance Precision Medicine

Mount Sinai Health System has launched a genetic sequencing project with the Regeneron Genetics Center (RGC), part of New York-based biotechnology company Regeneron, which will enroll 1 million patients over five years to enhance precision medicine and improve patient care.

According to the press release, the project’s size and scope make it one of the most ambitious genetic sequencing projects to date. It aims to gather data from racially and ethnically diverse patients to create a unique genomic dataset. Researchers will then use this dataset to assess the potential of precision medicine approaches in routine care and develop new therapies.

The collaboration will combine data from Mount Sinai’s large patient population of about 4 million patients per year with RGC’s gene sequencing capabilities. The resulting dataset will be supported by a Vibrent Health digital health platform.

“For decades, we have hoped that genetics would offer doctors the blueprints to each patient’s unique health care needs. While genetics has proved to be a powerful tool for understanding rare disorders, we still do not have enough data to know how effective it may be in helping to treat and diagnose most patients. A big reason for this is that most gene sequencing studies are not designed for this,” said Alexander W. Charney, MD, PhD, project leader and associate professor of psychiatry and genetics and genomic sciences, at Icahn Mount Sinai, in the press release. “For this project, we found several key ways to provide researchers with the massive, clinically focused, real-world data that are needed to truly determine the effectiveness of precision medicine and hopefully improve patient care.”

One of these ways was to streamline enrollment as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. During this time, researchers had to resort to recruiting patients by phone, which unexpectedly resulted in higher recruitment rates.

The project will be administered by The Charles Bronfman Institute for Personalized Medicine at Icahn Mount Sinai and part of other initiatives under the institute’s purview, including deep phenotyping of patients with informative genetic variation and multimodal data science.

This announcement is the latest in Mount Sinai’s multi-year efforts to advance precision medicine.

In 2016, the health system partnered with RGC to conduct whole exome sequencing of 33,000 DNA and plasma samples held in Mount Sinai’s BioMe Biobank, another ongoing precision medicine effort examining the broader relationship between health and the human genome.

The following year, Mount Sinai created its own centralized imaging research warehouse to integrate medical images with de-identified EHR data to support precision medicine efforts in genomics, cancer, and neurodegenerative disease through imaging analytics.

However, Mount Sinai is not the only provider innovating in this area.

Last month, Texas-based Memorial Hermann Health System and Helix announced a new collaboration to launch a population genomics program to personalize patient care. The initiative will include data from 100,000 health system patients, who will mail in a one-time saliva sample for whole exome sequencing. The data will then be analyzed to identify patient risk for certain conditions, such as cardiovascular disease.