The Institut Pasteur And Chan Soon-Shiong Institute For Molecular Medicine Partner To Form Global Genomics Center

PARIS & LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Chan Soon-Shiong Institute for Molecular Medicine (CSSIOMM) and the Institut Pasteur today announced a partnership to establish The Pasteur Global Health Genomics Center (PGHGC). The aim of the PGHGC is to advance genomic research utilizing next-generation patient information systems needed to support the acquisition and usage of high-quality sequencing data.

“The creation of PGHGC will enable new approaches to therapeutic decisions, drug discovery capabilities, machine learning predictive modeling and support for clinical trials to evaluate the impact of therapeutic interventions in large patient populations”

Building on the strengths of the Institut Pasteur International Network, an existing network of National research Institutes, PGHGC will upgrade laboratory facilities on five continents to support the translation of data coming from intensive collaborative biomedical research into clinical practice. In addition, PGHGC will invest in data acquisition, education, basic research and training to fully deliver on the current promises of novel diagnostics and precision therapies in cancer and infectious diseases. The headquarters of the PGHGC will be located on the campuses of the Institut Pasteur, in Paris. PGHGC will have strong links with key science research centers within the Institut Pasteur International Network.

The Chan Soon-Shiong Institute has made an initial commitment of (US) $1 million to fund the design phase of the project, which includes advancing genomic research for precision medicine within the Institut Pasteur International Network. New resources will be dedicated to manage and coordinate the development of the genomics center in Paris. Simultaneously, an educational resource center in bioinformatics and data analysis will be created at the Institut Pasteur in Dakar; the facility will also lead to develop a “vaccine-pole” for the international network, with an expanded production center for vaccines and cellular based immunotherapies for cancer and infectious diseases research programs in West Africa.

A step-by-step process of accomplished milestones, including complementing resources by adjoining new high profile strategic partners, is anticipated to secure investments. Based on the milestones, six geographical sites for coverage in five continents will be added to PGHGC during 2017 and 2018. By 2020, a total of 12 global resource hubs for data intensive and high throughput based precision medicine will be fully operational, comprising the core of the PGHGC.

Today’s announcement in Paris was made jointly by the President of the Institut Pasteur, Dr. Christian Brechot and Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the Chairman of the Chan-Soon-Shiong Family Foundation, and Chairman and CEO of the Chan-Soon-Shiong Institute of Molecular Medicine, a non-profit medical research organization.

Commenting on the announcement, Dr. Brechot said: “Recent ground-breaking developments in high throughput bio-technologies and computer science, together with accompanying breakthroughs in biochemistry and biophysics, have revolutionized the field of bio-medicine. To paraphrase Louis Pasteur, ‘We are now on the edge of solving mysteries in the 21^st century, and more than at any other time in history, the veil is getting thinner and thinner.’ These exciting advances are already influencing clinical practice and hold the promise of transforming the landscape for not only curing, controlling and fighting, but preventing disease and epidemics, in the battle for improved global health.

“To fully answer new demands in the emerging era of big data intensive and worldwide biomedical research, there is a need for a globally unifying venture that harnesses big data utilization in the search for novel diagnostics and precision medicine. The PGHGC initiative is the appropriate answer to this urgent problem.”

“The creation of PGHGC will enable new approaches to therapeutic decisions, drug discovery capabilities, machine learning predictive modeling and support for clinical trials to evaluate the impact of therapeutic interventions in large patient populations,” said Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, founder and chairman of the Chan Soon-Shiong Institute for Molecular Medicine. “Our shared goal is to establish a new standard for reproducible research in life science and empower qualified local scientists, researchers and public health officials to focus on the challenges in data utilization that are the most relevant for turning big data into smart data. We are hopeful and confident that this will lead to high profile biomarker discovery programs and the development of precision therapeutics in cancer and infectious diseases.”

“The creation of the PGHGC will fundamentally transform and boost current international efforts, focusing on the challenges in data utilization that are most relevant for turning big data into smart data and which are useful for biomarker discovery, development of precision therapeutics, and ultimately for the translation of results into clinical practice,” said Dr. Arnaud Fontanet, the Director of the newly created Institut Pasteur Center for Global Health, Research and Education. “The Center will provide the necessary backbone for research based and clinically targeted global projects in the network.”

Dr. Marc Jouan, the Director of the Institut Pasteur International Network, stated, “The founder of the Institut Pasteur, Louis Pasteur, once said in the late 19th century that disease has no borders. That hasn’t changed, and if anything, has become more prevalent in the 21st century. Through our pioneering collaboration with Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the Global Health Genomics Center will serve as a nucleus and catalyst to unify bio-banking, data storage, data management and data analysis through a synergistic cloud-based platform throughout our 33-member, Institut Pasteur-related International Network, spanning five continents.”

“The roll out of the Pasteur Global Health Genomics Center will take place over the next five years. After an initial proof-of-concept phase, synergetic and complementary resources will be added by building up additional resource hubs at a rate of three hubs per year, leading up to a total of 12 fully operational resource hubs by 2020,” said Dr. Magnus Fontes, leader of the International Group for Data Analysis, part of the Center for Bioinformatics, BioStatistics and Integrative Biology and the International Division in Institut Pasteur Paris.

“This unprecedented global collaboration with The Chan Soon-Shiong Institute for Molecular Medicine will bring the 125-year-old Institut Pasteur International Network into the forefront of establishing a new ecosystem of doing science in the 21st century.”

About The Chan Soon-Shiong Institute of Molecular Medicine (CSSIOMM)

Chan Soon-Shiong Institute of Molecular Medicine (CSSIOMM) is a division of Chan Soon-Shiong NantHealth Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit medical research organization focused on transforming medical practice by facilitating digital molecular diagnosis. CSSIOMM is building a coalition dedicated to collaborating with health care, academic, government, and private sector partners to enable evidence based and molecularly driven, clinical decisions. The mission of CSSIOMM is to facilitate transformation of health systems to focus on health not just healthcare, to create a culture of caring and to support the development of next generation clinical scientists. The goal of the CSSIOMM is to improve the lives of the people and to enable sustainable health systems for the future.

About the Institut Pasteur

The Institut Pasteur, a private foundation with officially recognized charitable status set up by Louis Pasteur in 1887, has become a world-renowned center for biomedical research with an international network of 33 institutes worldwide. In the pursuit of its mission to prevent and fight against diseases in France and throughout the world, the Institut Pasteur operates in four main areas: scientific and medical research, public health and health monitoring, teaching, and business development and technology transfer. More than 2,500 people work on the Institut Pasteur’s campus in Paris. The Institut Pasteur’s work focuses on the study of microbiology and infectious diseases, immunology, neurosciences, developmental biology, genetics and cancers. Since its inception, 10 researchers working at the Institut Pasteur have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine. For more information on the Institut Pasteur, visit www.pasteur.fr/en and www.pasteurfoundation.org.

About NantWorks

NantWorks, LLC, founded by renowned physician scientist and inventor of the first human nanoparticle chemotherapeutic agent Abraxane®, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, is the umbrella organization for the following entities: NantHealth, NantMobileHealth, NantOmics, NantBio, NantCell, NantPharma, NantCapital and NantCloud. Fact-based and solution-driven, each of NantWorks’ division entities operates at the nexus of innovation and infrastructure.

The core mission of NantWorks is convergence and a systems approach to human biology: to develop and deliver a diverse range of technologies that accelerates innovation, broaden the scope of scientific discovery, enhance ground-breaking research, and improve healthcare treatment for those in need. NantWorks is building an integrated fact-based, genomically and proteomically -informed, personalized approach to the delivery of care and the development of next generation diagnostics and therapeutics for life threatening diseases such as Cancer, Infectious Diseases and Alzheimer’s. For more information please visit www.nantworks.com and follow Dr. Soon-Shiong on Twitter@solvehealthcare.

About NantOmics:

NantOmics, a member of the NantWorks ecosystem of companies, delivers molecular diagnostic capabilities with the intent of providing actionable intelligence and molecularly driven decision support for cancer patients and their providers at the point of care. NantOmics is the first molecular diagnostics company to pioneer an integrated approach to unearthing the genomic and proteomic variances that initiate and drive cancer, by analyzing both normal and tumor cells from the same patient and following identified variances through from DNA to RNA to protein to drug. NantOmics has a highly scalable cloud-based infrastructure capable of storing and processing thousands of genomes a day, computing genomic variances in near real-time, and correlating proteomic pathway analysis with quantitative multi-plexed protein expression analysis from the same micro-dissected tumor sample used for genomic analysis. For more information please visit www.nantomics.com and follow Dr. Soon-Shiong on Twitter @solvehealthcare.

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