Singapore General Hospital (SGH) and Thermo Fisher Scientific have established a collaborative partnership that will work to identify cancer genetic mutations linked with Asian populations on Thermo Fisher’s Ion Torrent next-generation sequencing (NGS) platform.

The research collaboration will take phased approaches to analyze retrospective samples from cancer patients with Asian ancestry to identify the mutational profiles and their differences from existing data of reference populations, which principally contain data from individuals of Caucasian ancestry. In the first phase of the project, SGH will perform a validation study using the Ion Torrent PGM platform and the Oncomine Comprehensive Assay. The project will then move to NGS-based prospective data analysis of multiple cancers by using formalin fixed paraffin embedded (FFPE) tissues and potentially other types of clinical samples to realize the highest levels of data acquisition that will lead to new tests with clinical actionability in the future.

The research started in May and is part of the POLARIS@SingHealth program funded by A*STAR to enable cutting-edge omics technologies and translating them for disease diagnosis and treatment in Singapore in the future. It will be actualized by establishing the necessary infrastructure and resources, together with its clinical partners.

The project is supported in part by the Central R&D organization of the Life Sciences Solutions Group of Thermo Fisher Scientific.