March 2, 2012, Copenhagen, Denmark and Shenzhen, China – Novo Nordisk, one of the world's leading companies in diabetes care and BGI, the world's largest genomics organization jointly announced that they have reached an agreement to establish a global collaboration framework, which provides an unprecedented collaborative opportunity for Novo Nordisk and BGI to accelerate their growth, execute their global partnering strategy and support disease research and development efforts. The agreement was signed by Professor Allan Ertmann Karlsen, Corporate and Scientific Vice President of Novo Nordisk and Dr. Ning Li, Director of BGI Europe.
Under the agreement, this collaboration will combine BGI's next generation sequencing platforms and bioinformatics capabilities with Novo Nordisk's expertise and experience in drug development under a global framework. This agreement is enforceable to Novo Nordisk's headquarter in Denmark, international production facilities in seven countries, and its affiliates or regional offices in 75 countries as well as BGI's headquarter in Shenzhen and affiliates worldwide, including BGI-Hong Kong, BGI-Europe, BGI-Americas, among others.
"We appreciate this great opportunity to bring our extensive genomics experience in the collaboration with Novo Nordisk." said Dr. Li, "With the recent opening of our first European Genome Centre in Denmark, we believe it will provide an excellent platform for us and our collaborators, and we are looking forward to establish more collaborations with more partners across Europe and worldwide. "
About Novo Nordisk
Novo Nordisk is a global healthcare company with 89 years of innovation and leadership in diabetes care. The company also has leading positions within haemophilia care, growth hormone therapy and hormone replacement therapy.
Headquartered in Denmark, Novo Nordisk has approximately 32,700 employees in 75 countries, and markets its products in more than 190countries.
Novo Nordisk's B shares are listed on NASDAQ OMX Copenhagen (Novo-B). Its ADRs are listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NVO).
About BGI
BGI was founded in 1999 with the mission of being a premier scientific partner to the global research community. It's goal is to make leading-edge genomic science highly accessible through its investment in infrastructure that leverages the best available technology, economies of scale, and expert bioinformatics resources. BGI, and its affiliates, BGI Americas and BGI Europe, have established partnerships and collaborations with leading academic and government research institutions as well as global biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, supporting a variety of disease, agricultural, environmental, and related applications.
BGI has established a proven track record of excellence, delivering results with high efficiency and accuracy for innovative, high-profile research which has generated over 170 publications in top-tier journals such as Nature and Science. These accomplishments include sequencing one percent of the human genome for the International Human Genome Project, contributing 10 percent to the International Human HapMap Project, carrying out research to combat SARS and German deadly E. coli, playing a key role in the Sino-British Chicken Genome Project, and completing the sequence of the rice genome, the silkworm genome, the first Asian diploid genome, the potato genome, and, most recently, 1000 genomes and human Gut metagenome.
For more information about BGI please visit www.genomics.cn