MyOme, Inc., a leading clinical genetics innovation company, and Broad Clinical Labs (BCL), a world expert in whole genome sequencing (WGS) are announcing a collaboration to support the Southern Research (SR) program, Catalyst. SR is a leading nonprofit research organization committed to advancing science and medicine in Alabama and beyond, and Catalyst is an innovative program bringing genetics-driven clinical risk assessments to Alabamians to increase access to better healthcare decision making and address healthcare disparities. This unique initiative not only provides cost-free assessment of personalized health risks, it also provides participants’ primary care providers with actionable insights for their patients.
Alabama currently ranks 49th in the nation for life expectancy(1), (averaging 73.2 years of age). According to a recent report(2), the state ranks 44th in overall health system performance with black and Hispanic Alabamians being disproportionately impacted. The leading cause of death in the state is heart disease, and it is estimated that approximately 2 million of its residents either have type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes (~40% of the population)(3).
“Communities in Alabama and across the nation have waited too long for advances in healthcare technologies—specifically genetics—to benefit them in clinical practice,” said Josh Carpenter, President and CEO, SR. “Providing these patients and their providers with personalized health insights using MyOme’s industry-leading, clinical risk assessments will allow providers to identify potentially life-saving interventions, lifestyle and medication changes, imaging, and early cancer detection tests for their patients.”
MyOme’s genetics-driven tests and reports, which leverage BCL’s WGS services, deliver personalized clinical risk assessment across cancers, cardiac conditions, metabolic diseases, other commonly observed diseases, and response to commonly prescribed medications. In addition to disease risk attributed to rare, single-gene alterations that impact approximately 6% of the population(4), MyOme uses its polygenic risk score (PRS) technology and pharmacogenomics reports to provide risk for disease for everyone. MyOme’s PRS technology combines the impact of hundreds of thousands to millions of variants in an individual’s genome with commonly measured clinical factors to account for environmental and lifestyle differences. The technology has been validated across multiple ethnicities, including those of African and Hispanic descent.
“We are proud to be part of this important initiative,” said Premal Shah, PhD, CEO, MyOme. “Empowering patients to live a lifetime of better health by assessing the risk and detecting disease earlier is core to our mission. By providing a single sample, these patients and their providers will have access to MyOme’s industry-leading, genetics-driven clinical reports including a proactive screen for rare, single-gene alterations, a pharmacogenomics report measuring response to over 70 common medications, and our integrated PRS reports for coronary artery disease, type 2 diabetes, and breast cancer. They will also have access to our expanding menu of reports for other diseases.”
Catalyst will be available to patients and their established providers across the state of Alabama. Providers will order the tests using MyOme’s provider portal. Patient’s samples will be collected at their provider’s clinic and sent to the Center for Clinical and Translational Science (CCTS), which is run out of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. From there, samples will be sent to BCL for genomic sequencing, and de-identified patient samples will be securely stored at CCTS to power individual-anonymized population-health research studies to measure how access to clinical, biological, and social data may impact patient outcomes. Once a patient sample is sequenced by BCL, data will be shared seamlessly and securely to MyOme for analysis using their CLIA-certified and CAP-accredited bioinformatics and report generation platform. Results will be available via MyOme’s provider portal, where the patient or provider can request cost-free genetic counseling if desired.
BCL, as part of The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, has a history of providing high-quality genome sequencing at scale to serve large populations. “This initiative will help narrow the gap between what is possible with genomic-driven medicine and what is clinically accessible for most patients,” said Niall Lennon, PhD, Chair and Chief Scientific Officer of BCL. “BCL has always been at the forefront of deploying the most advanced genomic sequencing technologies and together with MyOme’s bioinformatics and analysis pipeline, we can bring this power to the clinic, seamlessly providing patients and providers individual risk assessments powered by an individual’s whole genome.”
Catalyst is expected to begin in October 2024.
References:
(1) Centers for Disease Control (CDC). National Center for Health Statistics, National Vital Statistics System, 2018, 2019 and 2020 data.
(2) The Commonwealth Fund Reports; April 18, 2024
(3) Centers for Disease Control (CDC). National Center for Health Statistics, Alabama; July 29, 2024
(4) World Health Organization (WHO), National Institutes of Health (NIH), European Organisation for Rare Diseases (EURORDIS) and the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD)
