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| EDGC's co-CEO Lee Min-seob, fourth from left, and Hwang Yoon-il from CJ CheilJedang's research and development planning division, fourth from right, signed a memorandum of understanding on Nov. 12 to develop "genetically proven" health foods. Courtesy of EDGC |
By Ko Dong-hwan
South Korean genome sequencing firm Eone Diagnomics Genome Center (EDGC) and one of the country's largest food manufacturers, CJ CheilJedang, will co-produce "genetically proven" health foods.
EDGC's co-CEO Lee Min-seob and Hwang Yoon-il from CJ's research and development planning division signed the deal on Nov. 12 to produce foods that can be personally customized based on EDGC's genetic big data.
The partnership also agreed to provide a genome sequencing test service to customers and cooperate for business-to-business and business-to-customer sales using infrastructure owned by the two firms.
Hwang said CJ chose EDGC because "they have the capacity that enables us to improve our services for consumers' health and lifestyles."
"With our duty to improve people's health and our R&D assets, we will lead South Korea's future health food markets," Hwang said.
At the signing ceremony, Lee compared his company to "Google in a genome sequence analyzing market."
"Facebook, Amazon and Google all have their ecology in the internet," Lee said. "Providing a genetic big data algorithm to various products and services, from food and financial to other consumer markets, is EDGC's core business value."
EDGC is the only Asian member of the global "Genome Sequence Archive" project that is collecting human genetic-related data. The project also includes America's Illumina, the world's leading genetic sequencing firm, and Harvard University's Broad Institute.
