November 7, 2013

media launch of PGP-UK

The UK has a strong track record in genomics, most notably as a major contributor to the sequencing of the genome by the Human Genome Project in 2000 and the ongoing 1000 Genomes Project.

A new addition to this landscape will arrive in the UK with the launch of the open access UK Personal Genome Project (PGP-UK).  The project will be the first UK sequencing project which will ask participants to sign up to an ‘open consent’ allowing their sequencing and biomedical information to be placed on the internet and made freely accessible to the research community and the general public. The scientists involved in PGP-UK hope to find  tens of thousands of members of the public willing to take part in this project.  All participants will be offered an analysis of their own genome, and every donated genome will also potentially be used to enable improvements in personalised medicine.

PGP-UK will be part of the international Personal Genome Project with the UK the first European participant.

Speakers:

George Church, Professor of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Director of PersonalGenomes.org

Stephan Beck, Professor of Medical Genomics, University College London

Jane Kaye, Director HeLEX – Centre for Health, Law and Emerging Technologies, University of Oxford

Richard Durbin, Joint Head of Human Genetics and Head of Computational Genomics,  Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute