Michael Zody, PhD, Scientific Director of Computational Biology at the New York Genome Center (NYGC), provided an overview and update of the NYGC’s collaborative SARS-CoV-2 viral surveillance initiatives at a GenomeWeb webinar entitled “Pathogen Surveillance at Scale Using Molecular Inversion Probes.”
As part of his presentation, Dr. Zody detailed the sequencing/data sharing activities of the COVID-19 Genomics Research Network (CGRN), the multi-disciplinary research consortium formed by NYGC Evnin Family Scientific Director and CEO Tom Maniatis, PhD, in March 2020. This partnership includes hospitals and academic centers in the New York/New Jersey region sending biospecimen samples from COVID-19 patients to the NYGC’s Research Sequencing Laboratory for sequencing and analysis. This data, de-identified to protect personal health information of patients, is returned to the partner institution, shared with city and state agencies, and uploaded to open-source research community databases. Dr. Zody also shared findings from two studies led by CGRN partner Hackensack Meridian Health, one focused on immunocompromised COVID patients and another on assessing post-vaccination infection breakthroughs.
Watch this excerpt of Dr. Zody’s presentation below:
Future plans for the CGRN include developing a data commons repository of its sequenced samples combined with available clinical data from partner hospitals as a further resource to the research community. Dr. Maniatis is also the moderator for ongoing CGRN meetings, which serve as information-sharing forums for the global COVID-19 genomics research community.
STUDIES REFERENCED:
mSphere. 2021 Aug. 25
Emergence of multiple SARS-CoV-2 antibody escape variants in an immunocompromised host undergoing convalescent plasma treatment.
Liang Chen, Michael C. Zody, Clara Di Germanio, Rachel Martinelli, Jose R. Mediavilla, Marcus H. Cunningham, Kaelea Composto, Kar Fai Chow, Milena Kordalewska, André Corvelo, Dayna M. Oschwald, Samantha Fennessey, Marygrace Zetkulic, Sophia Dar, Yael Kramer, Barun Mathema, Soren Germer, Mars Stone, Graham Simmons, Michael P. Busch, Tom Maniatis, David S. Perlin, and Barry N. Kreiswirth
medRxiv. 2021 July 5.
Post-vaccination SARS-COV-2 among healthcare workers in New Jersey: a genomic epidemiological study.
Barun Mathema, Liang Chen, Kar Fai Chow, Yanan Zhao, Michael C Zody, Jose R Mediavilla, Marcus H Cunningham, Kaelea Composto, Annie Lee, Dayna M Oschwald, Soren Germer, Samantha Fennessey, Kishan Patel, David Wilson, Ann Cassell, Lauren Pascual, Andrew Ip, André Corvelo, Sophia Dar, Yael Kramer, Tom Maniatis, David S Perlin, Barry N Kreiswirth
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VIDEO EXCERPT courtesy of GenomeWeb; full webinar available here.
