Vanderbilt University Medical Center has entered into a strategic research agreement with Celgene Corporation, a biopharmaceutical company based in Summit, N.J. This collaboration with Celgene will harness the power of Vanderbilt’s extensive genomic and bioinformatics resources and expertise. In particular, it will leverage BioVU, a DNA database linked to de-identified health information that includes 2.5 million clinical records and 215,000 genetic samples.

“Celgene has demonstrated real commitment to forming innovative collaborations such as this to accelerate development of personalized therapies with the goal of improving the lives of patients with significant unmet medical need,” said Gordon Bernard, MD, vice chancellor for Research at Vanderbilt. 

BioVU already is being used to identify novel associations between phenotypes (observable physical characteristics) and potential drug targets to speed the discovery and development of new therapies and find new uses for existing therapies. This approach, called a PheWAS or phenome-wide association study, was pioneered at Vanderbilt by Josh Denny, MD, MS, associate professor of Biomedical Informatics and Medicine, and senior advisor to the National Institutes of Health Office of the Director.

The research agreement with Celgene builds on a previous collaboration with Vanderbilt established in 2014 to investigate new uses for Celgene’s anti-inflammatory drugs that were already on the market.