News Announcement
The COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) consortium and the Canadian COVID Genomics Network (CanCOGeN) launch new partnership
COG-UK and CanCOGeN are working together to share knowledge and protocols
The COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) consortium is collaborating with the newly formed Canadian COVID Genomics Network (CanCOGeN) as it launches a national sequencing network to monitor the pandemic’s development. By sharing knowledge, lessons learned and protocols, the initiatives will each support national efforts to coordinate the work of healthcare, public, private and academic organisations to sequence and analyse the spread and evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and how it affects patients. The partnership will also allow both groups to share insights and discoveries to drive understanding of the pandemic as it changes over time.
COG-UK is supporting two key genomic projects:
- sequencing the virus to understand how it works and is evolving
- analysing people’s genomes to understand why they experience such different health outcomes.
CanCOGeN is an open and collaborative initiative to coordinate safe data sharing and analysis across Canada. It will oversee the sequencing of genomes of up to 150,000 viral samples and 10,000 patients to inform clinical and public health strategies. The work will also provide the foundation to develop the tools needed to better protect Canadians’ health when similar outbreaks occur in the future.
