GMI Co-Founders, Dan Crowley, Paul Thurk, Sean Ennis, Maurice Treacy and Irish PM, Enda Kenny
The 4.7 million-strong Irish population will soon be under the genomic microscope, following a $40 million series A funding round by Genomics Medicine Ireland (GMI).
Investors include ARCH Venture Partners, Polaris Partners, and GV (formerly Google Ventures). The Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF) also contributed from its €8 billion ($8.73 billion) sovereign development fund, which was set aside for economic development and job creation in 2014.
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Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny formally announced the news, highlighting the local economic impact he believes GMI could have.
“When the Government established the ISIF, we wanted to encourage new investment and job creation across Ireland in groundbreaking new sectors such as next generation healthcare solutions.,” Kenny said in a news release. “With the combination of world-class talent backed by global investors, I’ve no doubt that the scientific platform developed by Genomics Medicine Ireland will be leading the way on new prevention strategies and treatments for diseases and rare conditions.”
According to the news release, the company’s platform is based on that of deCODE genetics, a biopharmaceutical company founded in 1996 that it says is “widely recognized as the birthplace of population genomics.”
DeCODE made many inroads analyzing the genomes of the Icelandic people, though it struggled financially in the beginning. In 2010, deCODE filed for bankruptcy, ultimately receiving a $14 million bailout from prior investors Polaris and ARCH, who have now backed GMI. Several years later the company was in much stronger position, leading to its acquisition by Amgen for $415 million.
GMI’s founding team of investors, entrepreneurs, and pharma veterans will no doubt be looking to avoid that early trial and error. The company’s business model appears to be two-fold, with an aim to collect new data through a genome-wide association study (GWAS) and then translate those findings into clinically actionable information.
For part one, GMI’s website says it “is embarking on a multi-year, island-wide health discovery project which aims to build the largest, most comprehensive population-scale, disease-specific genomic study ever created. This will significantly advance and empower research in healthcare and life sciences.”
In an email forwarded by a representative, Daniel Crowley, acting CEO of Genomics Medicine Ireland, expanded upon the value he believes studying the Irish population can bring.
“The population of Ireland is relevant to most western populations, its size and characteristics are unique and studying the population in Ireland can be a powerful analytical tool to help researchers spot variations in the DNA. Ireland also has statistically relevant sizes in a number of [currently incurable] medical conditions and it enjoys close collaboration between its universities and hospitals.”
The initiative may deliver on its promise to further our understanding of the relationship between genes, lifestyles, and diseases. But given the demographics of Ireland, is it more of the same?
Based on a 2011 census report, Ireland was 85.5 percent “White Irish.” A further 9.3 percent were classified as “Any other White background.” Combined this brings the caucasian population pool to over 95 percent.
This ties into debates around the issue of diversity in genomics. Experts point to a seminal 2009 study that found that 96 percent of participants in genome-wide association studies were of European descent.
In a phone interview, co-author of a 2016 Nature commentary piece on the lack of genomic diversity in research, Alice Popejoy, related her research to GMI’s Irish undertaking.
“There are differences in genetic structure based on where populations are located geographically and you could argue that Ireland has a particular set of genetic variations that are important to study. That’s a perfectly valid argument,” said Popejoy, a Ph.D., candidate in Public Health Genetics at the University of Washington.
However, she did call attention to the lack of diversity in this kind of research.
“But when you look at it from a global health perspective, $40 billion is being spent on this and the resources are heavily concentrated in Europe and North America. Companies need to be proactive at increasing the diversity of their genetic research. They’re not necessarily part of the problem, but they’re not part of the solution either.”
Macro issues aside, GMI is forging ahead with local and international partnerships, with an aim to create 150 jobs and breath new life into the country’s genomics industry. To act on the data collected they will likely need some powerful biopharma partners, a prospect the company says has been met with enthusiasm by industry.
Image: Genomics Medicine Ireland
