Human Longevity Inc. (HLI), a biological data-driven human health technology and cell therapy company, announced a collaborative agreement with King’s College London to access their TwinsUK Registry.

Tim Spector, MD, Professor of Genetic Epidemiology, King’s College London, and Director of the Department of Twin Research and Genetic Epidemiology at St. Thomas’ Hospital, London started the registry in 1993. HLI and Dr. Spector will collaborate directly as part of the agreement. With more than 11,000 twin individuals, the Registry is one of the most comprehensive collections of genome and microbiome samples paired with phenotype information in the world.

HLI will conduct whole genome and microbiome sequencing on up to 2,000 individuals, along with metabolomic analysis on up to 6,000 longitudinal samples in TwinsUK. HLI is working with the company Metabolon to perform the metabolite profiling.

HLI is currently sequencing and analyzing 2,000 genomes per month using Illumina’s HiSeq X Ten sequencing machines. The combined high quality, comprehensive data will continue to enrich the HLI Database and HLI Knowledge Base, which includes the company’s proprietary informatics analysis and data interpretation and integration. The Database and Knowledge Base form the core of HLI’s business. The company is pursuing agreements with a variety of customers including pharmaceutical and biotech companies, academic health systems, governments and insurers.

“The TwinsUK Registry is one of the largest and best characterized databases of individuals in the world,” said J. Craig Venter, PhD, HLI’s co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer. “Having access to the clinical phenotype information collected by Dr. Spector and his team will greatly enhance our Database and Knowledge Base, and will enable the teams to collaborate on identifying correlations between phenotypes and genetic predisposition to disease and health.”

Dr. Spector commented, “Combining our detailed health data collected for more than 21 years on the twins with new metagenomics of gut microbes and the exciting technology of metabolomics in longitudinal samples is an amazing opportunity. The next generation sequencing and analysis expertise of HLI, plus the unique data and design of the twin study, provides the perfect platform to unlock the clues to aging-related diseases and personalized medicine.”

HLI, a privately held company headquartered in San Diego, CA was founded in 2013 by pioneers in the fields of genomics and stem cell therapy. Using advances in genomic sequencing, the human microbiome, proteomics, informatics, computing, and cell therapy technologies, HLI is building the world’s most comprehensive database of human genotypes and phenotypes as a basis for a variety of commercialization opportunities to help solve aging related disease and human biological decline. HLI will be licensing access to its database, and developing new diagnostics and therapeutics as part of their product offerings. For more information please visit, www.humanlongevity.com

King’s College London is one of the top 20 universities in the world (2014/15 QS World University Rankings) and the fourth oldest in England. It is The Sunday Times ‘Best University for Graduate Employment 2012/13'. King’s has nearly 26,000 students (of whom more than 10,600 are graduate students) from some 140 countries worldwide, and more than 7,000 staff. The College is in the second phase of a £1 billion redevelopment programme which is transforming its estate.

King’s has an outstanding reputation for providing world-class teaching and cutting-edge research. In the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise for British universities, 23 departments were ranked in the top quartile of British universities; over half of our academic staff work in departments that are in the top 10 per cent in the UK in their field and can thus be classed as world leading. The College is in the top seven UK universities for research earnings and has an overall annual income of nearly £590 million.

King’s has a particularly distinguished reputation in the humanities, law, the sciences (including a wide range of health areas such as psychiatry, medicine, nursing and dentistry) and social sciences including international affairs. It has played a major role in many of the advances that have shaped modern life, such as the discovery of the structure of DNA and research that led to the development of radio, television, mobile phones and radar.

King’s College London and Guy’s and St Thomas’, King’s College Hospital and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trusts are part of King’s Health Partners. King’s Health Partners Academic Health Sciences Centre (AHSC) is a pioneering global collaboration between one of the world’s leading research-led universities and three of London’s most successful NHS Foundation Trusts, including leading teaching hospitals and comprehensive mental health services.