Human Longevity, Inc. (HLI), a privately held company pioneers in the fields of genomics and stem cell therapy, and Cleveland Clinic, a nonprofit multispecialty academic medical center, announced a broad collaboration agreement to first sequence and analyze blood samples from Cleveland Clinic’s GeneBank study of de-identified patients.

The two organizations will apply whole genome, cancer and microbiome sequencing focusing on a subset of samples with the goal of discovering novel disease genes and disease pathways associated with heart disease.

“Cleveland Clinic is one of the premier clinical health care settings in the world and we are excited to be working with Dr. Cosgrove and his team. Using HLI’s powerful genomic technologies and analysis tools to better understand the biological basis for disease should enable earlier intervention and better treatments,” said J. Craig Venter, Ph.D., CEO of HLI.

“In medicine we are constantly exploring opportunities to better understand how diseases develop and what we can do to either prevent or provide the most impactful and effective course of treatment,” said Toby Cosgrove, M.D., president and CEO of Cleveland Clinic. “We are thrilled to be advancing the correlation of genomic data with clinical care.”

HLI is currently sequencing and analyzing thousands of whole genomes per month. The company is integrating this whole genome sequence data with extensive and unique clinical measures and imaging within the HLI Knowledgebase. The combined high quality, comprehensive data will continue to enrich the HLI Knowledgebase, which includes the company’s proprietary informatics analysis and data interpretation and integration. The company is pursuing agreements with a variety of customers including pharmaceutical and biotech companies, academic health systems, governments and insurers.