University joins 10 leading medical and research institutions to form New York Genome Center

The Rockefeller University, along with 10 of the country’s leading medical and research institutions, has formed a new genomic facility designed to accelerate progress toward a new era of genome-based research and medicine. The New York Genome Center, which will become one of the largest genomic facilities in North America, will begin operations as early as spring 2012; its 120,000 square foot facility will be located
in Manhattan.

Joining Rockefeller are Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Columbia University, Cornell University/Weill Cornell Medical College, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Mount Sinai Medical Center, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, New York University/NYU School of Medicine, North Shore-LIJ Health System, The Jackson Laboratory and Stony Brook University. The Hospital for Special Surgery is an associate founding member. The NYGC receives support from New York City as well as private companies and foundations.

“In the decade since the human genome was sequenced, the application of high throughput sequencing and other genomic tools has led to great advances in identifying the genetic drivers of several cancers and other diseases, and is dramatically accelerating the development of new drugs for these conditions,” says Marc Tessier-Lavigne, president of The Rockefeller University. “The New York Genome Center and the collaborations it affords will enable us to apply these powerful tools even more broadly to extend this success to many other diseases.”

Through this collaboration, scientists and physicians from member institutions will share diverse clinical and genomic data on a scale not yet realized in order to discover the molecular underpinnings of disease, identify and validate biomarkers, and accelerate development of novel diagnostics and targeted therapeutics to improve clinical care.