• New solution to empower accurate interpretation of Next-Generation Sequencing data
  • Expanded offerings to make personalized treatment options a reality in UAE and region

Abu Dhabi: In a step aimed at boosting its clinical genomics capabilities in the region and beyond, G42 Healthcare, Abu Dhabi-based leading AI health-tech company, has announced a partnership with Saphetor SA, a Swiss precision medicine company and creator of the VarSome suite of bioinformatics solutions.

The collaboration is a pivotal step in G42 Healthcare’s strategy to support the health of future generations, in addition to reinforcing the UAE’s reputation as the hub for global innovation and research in the field of clinical genomics. 

Saphetor’s VarSome Clinical – a clinically-certified cloud-based platform empowering fast and accurate variant discovery, annotation, and interpretation of Next Generation Sequencing data – complements G42 Healthcare’s robust capabilities of sequencing data more rapidly and precisely, helping biologists, geneticists, and doctors to push the boundaries of healthcare innovation and discovery.

Enhancing these new capabilities is part of G42 Healthcare’s mission to provide insights and facilitate early diagnosis and treatment of cancer, rare and metabolic diseases, and other genetic conditions in the region. The company recently launched over 250 comprehensive clinical genetic testing panels that use state-of-the-art sequencing technologies, with the shortest turnaround time. This collaboration also enables clinical genomics, at scale, as a service, using G42 Healthcare’s 3 genomic sequencing platforms offering both long and short-read capabilities.

VarSome Clinical’s accurate variant calling and world-leading annotation and variant classification capabilities, coupled with Saphetor’s sophisticated implementation capabilities, make it a perfect fit for G42 Healthcare to cater to the strong data regulations in place in the region for genomic data.

Commenting on the partnership, Ashish Koshy said: “G42 Healthcare is committed to pushing the boundaries of innovation to enable us to continually offer innovative solutions across the entire healthcare value chain. The collaboration will fortify G42 Healthcare’s clinical genomics solutions by leveraging the VarSome suite of bioinformatics tools to deliver valuable data insights and improved outcomes. This partnership is a pivotal step in our efforts to reinforce UAE’s reputation as the regional hub of innovation in healthcare and life sciences.”

Andreas Massouras, CEO and Founder of Saphetor SA, said: “Since its inception, Saphetor is committed to enabling accurate molecular diagnosis at scale for a wide range of disorders through identification and interpretation of human genomic variants by leveraging proprietary algorithms and expert domain knowledge. VarSome is an extremely valuable resource to support clinical decisions as well as for clinical genomics research in delivering comprehensive genome data, biological insights, and healthcare outcomes for better personalized and preventive healthcare delivery. At Saphetor, we are all excited for our technology to serve the people of the UAE and beyond via our partnership with G42 Healthcare”.

VarSome Clinical is powered by a comprehensive molecular database of 140 curated and aggregated genomic data sources and is additionally supported by a vast library of linked publications and comments from a global community of over 500,000 users of VarSome.com. The platform applies recognized global interpretation standards to germline and somatic variants to produce pathogenicity classifications in real time.

G42 Healthcare has built the region’s largest Omics Centre of Excellence which leverages advanced sequencing technologies for short and long reads, making it a partner of choice for governments, research institutes, hospitals, and omics centers. This capability helps G42 Healthcare offer state-of-the-art clinical genetic sequencing services across the disease spectrum – from acute to chronic to lifestyle.

-Ends-

About G42 Healthcare

G42 Healthcare, a leading health-tech company, is on a mission to develop a world-class healthcare sector in the UAE and beyond, by harnessing data and advanced medical technologies to unlock the potential of personalized and preventive care and transforming the traditional healthcare ecosystem. We have built Biogenix Labs, UAE’s first COVID-19 accredited large-scale throughput laboratory, facilitated the 4Humanity clinical trials, the world’s first phase three trial for inactivated vaccine against COVID-19 with over 43,000 volunteers from 125+ nationalities across the pan-Arab region, established the region’s first dedicated contract research organization (IROS) for conducting clinical research with and for local populations, supported UAE’s healthcare authorities on the national vaccination implementation, conducted research into new vaccines and drug therapies, and built Omics Centre of Excellence, the region’s largest and most technologically advanced Omics facility that is the backbone for the Emirati Genome Program, the world’s most comprehensive population genomics initiative.

For further information on G42 Healthcare, visit https://www.g42healthcare.ai

About Saphetor SA

Saphetor SA, is a global precision-medicine company dedicated to large-scale identification and interpretation of human genetic variants by leveraging proprietary algorithms and expert domain knowledge.

Saphetor is the creator of VarSome, a suite of intuitive and data-driven bioinformatics solutions both for clinicians and researchers. VarSome.com professional community and search engine is freely accessible, featuring a widely-recognized community-driven knowledge base that enables flexible queries across more than 140 genetic and genomic data resources.

VarSome Premium and VarSome Clinical are professional editions of VarSome with powerful functionality and further sophisticated data-mining and analysis tools. VarSome Clinical is a CE-IVD-certified and HIPAA-compliant platform allowing fast and accurate variant discovery, annotation, and interpretation of NGS data for whole genomes, exomes, and gene panels, which helps clinicians reach faster and more accurate diagnoses and treatment decisions for genetic conditions. VarSome can also be integrated into existing in-house pipelines via VarSome API through cloud-based or on premises installations.