Berg, a Framingham-based biotech company, has joined an international project that will sequence 100,000 human genomes, gathering data to help develop more advanced treatments for cancers and rare diseases, according to the company’s president.
The company signed onto a partnership with Genomics England, a group formed by British Prime Minister David Cameron. The investigation into which genes cause various deadly diseases will help drug companies find new ways to target illnesses, said Niven Narain, Berg’s president and co-founder.
“If you look at the way a patient is treated today, it’s a one-size-fits-all approach that is not specific to the biology of the patient,” Narain said. “This type of technology is really the future.”
Berg will use its original technology — a system called Bayesian — to help analyze the genomes. The process uses mathematical algorithms, software and a supercomputer to analyze both lifestyle habits of the participants and information in their genes.
The end result, Narain said, comes out looking like an airline route map, with the hubs being the key areas in the patient’s biology where something has gone wrong.
“What the technology does is it helps define which genes are most responsible for the root cause of the problem,” Narain said.
Sir John Chisholm, the executive chairman of Genomics England, said in a statement that he is “delighted” to welcome Berg to the project.
“Exploring how industry will work with this unique dataset along with driving up the quality of the interpretation of genomic data are crucial to us in finding out how to understand and treat disease better in the future,” Chisholm said.
Berg joins several other local companies in the project, which was announced in March. Biogen, Alexion Pharmaceuticals and Dimension Therapeutics — all Cambridge-based — are also on the list of participants.
The analysis with Genomics England, which is owned by Britain’s Department of Health, is slated for completion by 2017.
According to Narain, having new information about the relationship between genes and illness will benefit both patients and drug developers.
“We’re going to move to outcome-based reimbursement, I’m sure of it,” he said. “It behooves the companies to know what is the biological fingerprint that’s correlated to a drug treatment.”
