Santiago, Chile (December 13, 2013) – BGI-Health and University of Mayor jointly announced that they have entered a collaborative agreement on non-invasive fetal trisomy test, hereditary cancer genomic testing and monogenic disorder genomic testing. The collaboration marks BGI Health bringing the cutting-edge genomics technology to Chile and other South America region. Prof. Ming Qi from BGI Health attended the press conference.

BGI Health is a subsidiary unit of BGI and provides genomic testing of Chromosome diseases, Hereditary hearing loss, Monogenic disorder, Neonatal hereditary metabolic disease, Thalassemia, etc. Its goal is to use genomics technology to benefit people.

University of Mayor is located in Santiago, Chile. It’s a non-profit private university, and also Chile's first and only university with international standard authentication. The university has already established a genetic disease diagnosis and treatment center and has accumulated rich clinical experience. By combining with BGI’s high-throughput sequencing technologies and bioinformatics expertise, the collaboration will effectively benefit people in South America.

Prof. Alejandro Poli from University of Mayor said, "With BGI Health, we will provide patients with early diagnosis and proper treatment, which will greatly improve the life quality of patients and reduce the treatment cost.”

Dr. Hao Zhang, Director of BGI Health at Americas, stated, “We are pleased to form collaboration with University of Mayor. With our efforts, the collaboration will bring genomics technology into South America and significantly improve healthcare of local people.”