![\"Genetic](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-886907934.jpg\" "\\"886907934\\"\/")
Credit: Andrew Brookes \/ Connect Images<\/p>\n Credit: Andrew Brookes \/ Connect Images<\/p>\n
When Alnylam Pharmaceuticals announced it would join the Alliance for Genomic Discovery (AGD), formed by Illumina and Nashville Biosciences, as the ninth biopharma member, the move signaled more than a new partnership. It marked another step toward reshaping precision medicine with large-scale, ancestrally diverse genomic data and detailed clinical records\u2014resources long dominated by European cohorts.<\/p>\n
\u201cGenetic evidence is one of the most powerful tools we have to improve drug discovery,\u201d Will J. Ferguson, vice president of pharmaceutical and biotech collaborations at Illumina, told Inside Precision Medicine. \u201cAGD was designed to bring together all the pieces\u2014sequencing infrastructure, informatics, and deep clinical data\u2014to drive discoveries that can lead to better, faster treatments.\u201d<\/p>\n
A new kind of biobank<\/p>\n
Traditional population biobanks like the UK Biobank have been invaluable but are limited in diversity. Ferguson credits UK Biobank\u2019s leadership while noting that its roughly 500,000 participants are \u201c96\u201397% European and primarily healthy volunteers with self-reported data.\u201d AGD, by contrast, pulls samples from health systems across the Southeastern United States. African Americans account for about 20% of its non-European participants, and each de-identified record includes around 11 years of electronic medical records (EMRs).<\/p>\n
One of Ferguson\u2019s most emphatic points is that genomic diversity is not a matter of optics but of scientific necessity. \u201cThe lion\u2019s share of genetic data in the field today comes from people of European descent. Full stop,\u201d he said. \u201cAncestral diversity is a big driver for novel discovery\u2014signals we haven\u2019t seen before.\u201d Ferguson predicts that biopharma companies will increasingly invest in underrepresented populations because they hold keys to understanding disease biology more fully. This shift could improve drug efficacy and equity: therapies developed and tested predominantly in European populations may not perform the same across ancestries.<\/p>\n
Moreover, the combination of diversity and clinical depth allows for studying disease progression and associations at a level of granularity unavailable elsewhere. For example, African American populations in the Southeast have higher prevalence rates of hypertension and certain cardiometabolic conditions. By examining their genetic variants alongside long EMR histories, AGD researchers can probe the molecular underpinnings of these disparities. This combination\u2014ancestral diversity, disease enrichment, and long-term clinical histories\u2014allows scientists to ask questions that were previously out of reach: How do cardiometabolic disorders progress differently across ancestries? What genetic signals predict neurodegenerative disease trajectories? Can rare variants reveal entirely new drug targets?<\/p>\n
AGD\u2019s infrastructure makes those explorations possible. Illumina\u2019s DRAGEN pipeline and Connected Analytics platform process and store the data, while deCODE genetics\u2014an Amgen subsidiary renowned for population genomics\u2014handled sequencing at record speed. \u201cdeCODE delivered ahead of schedule earlier this year,\u201d Ferguson said. \u201cIt was one of the fastest whole genome projects on record.\u201d Building and maintaining such a resource is not trivial. \u201cCapital is absolutely a consideration,\u201d Ferguson acknowledged. Sourcing samples, processing assays, and managing data at scale all require significant investment. Public-private partnerships, like the U.K. government\u2019s backing of UK Biobank, are one approach. AGD, however, has been privately funded so far, with Illumina and its biopharma partners shouldering costs.<\/p>\n
Diversity: the cornerstone of discovery<\/p>\n
Ferguson believes this model works because the return on investment\u2014faster, genetically validated drug targets\u2014is tangible. Studies have repeatedly shown that drug programs supported by genetic evidence are more than twice as likely to succeed, including a milestone Nature Genetics paper<\/a> in 2015 from Matt Nelson, PhD, who had a genetics role at GSK at the time and is now vice president, genetics and genomics, Deerfield Discovery and Development. Last year, Nelson provided an updated analysis in a Nature paper<\/a> in April 2024 that demonstrated a 2.6-fold increase in likelihood of success when you have genetic evidence at the beginning of the drug discovery journey, with even higher rates for certain diseases. \u201cThat\u2019s why biopharma companies are motivated to participate,\u201d Ferguson said. \u201cIt\u2019s about increasing the odds of success and reducing time to market for life-saving therapies.\u201d<\/p>\n