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The CNAG takes part in Geuvadis, a European project to implement genomics in a responsible manner

By 11 de February de 2011November 18th, 2020No Comments
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 11.02.2011

The CNAG takes part in Geuvadis, a European project to implement genomics in a responsible manner

The National Centre for Genomic Analysis (CNAG) based at the Barcelona Science Park, is one of the seventeen European and US sequencing centers that takes part in the GEUVADIS (GEnetic EUropean VAriation in DISease) consortium, financed by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Program. The aim of this project is to establish the basis for analysis standardization and promote good clinical practice in sequencing projects of human genomes between the scientific and the medical community.


Nowadays, advanced sequencing technologies have revolutionized this field allowing us to read in detail and analyze the complete sequencing of individual genomes in a rapid and cost-effective way never seen until now.

In response to the rapid evolution of these technologies, different new large-scale research projects have emerged analyzing thousand of samples across populations and disease categories, such as the 1000 Genomes Project and the International Cancer Genome Consortium in which the CNAG is taking part, along with other GEUVADIS members.

At present there are several ongoing debates on the sequencing of the genomes of thousands of individuals afflicted with the most common diseases, as the production of this large amount of data, poses a series of ethical, legal and social issues. On the one hand, it is necessary to carefully determine the quality and accuracy of the data produced in order to translate this information into a clinical plan.

On the other hand, the publication of these data for the scientific community and globally for the public in general leads us to an ethical, legal and social reflection on the privacy and freedom of individual patients. The GEUVADIS project –coordinated by Xavier Estivill at the Barcelona Center for Genomic Regulation- aims to be a coordinated, coherent and rigorous approximation intended to resolve these and other issues.

The Centre Nacional d’Anàlisi Genòmica is one of the five most important center in Europe. It was created in 2009 with the support of the Spanish government and the Generalitat of Catalonia local government. Its mission is to carry to term large-scale projects of DNA sequencing analysis in collaboration with researchers from Catalonia, Spain and Europe. The CNAF has a sequencing capacity of over 200 Gbases per day, which is the equivalent of 2 human genomes per day.