BIOMEDICUM GENOMICS (BMGen) was established in March 2006 as
a new functional genomics service platform and contract research unit of
the University of Helsinki. The unit is located at the Biomedicum
Helsinki, which is the largest center for Biomedical research in Finland.
The BMGen idea spinned off from realization that Biomedicum Helsinki
houses wonderful and with any international measures top-level core
facility research infrastructure and that there is increasing demand for
these core research technologies, services and know-how not only inside
but also outside of Biomedicum. Typically, core facilities are designed to
serve locally academic researchers, who wish to perform all or part of the
experimentation by themselves. Therefore, core services have traditionally
been "research hotels", which provide hands-on training, equipments and
instructions but only minor participation into specific research projects.
Research hotel concept works fine within boundaries of one institute but
it is often impossible to serve customers who do not have laboratories
next door. The BMGen management has long experience in running core
facilities and we saw that we can solve this problem of locality by
turning research hotels into full service platforms. This transformation
needs training of personnel to use core facility infrastructure and then
dedication of the time of these skilled personnel for contract research.
The initial ideas have matured into the key concept that BMGen is a
partner in your research, providing help in project planning, well-defined
functional genomics service packages and solutions for both academic and
applied research sector.
Our core competence is in the rapidly developing post-genomic era
scientific discipline called functional genomics. Functional genomics
explores changes and functions of genes in scope of large or even
genome-wide gene-sets. These new research approaches, which become
possible only after sequencing of the human genome was completed, have
opened completely new avenues for academic research and also offer new
promising solutions for biotech and pharmaceutical companies in
pharmacogenomics, identification of new drug targets and toxicity studies
of drug candidates.
The starting point for BMGen was to integrate and develop services of two
established and well-equipped core facilities, Biomedicum Biochip Center
(microarrays) and Biomedicum Virus Core (recombinant virus-based gene
silencing and gene overexpression services).
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Biomedicum Genomics now provides functional genomics services, service
packages and solutions related to gene expression, copy number profiling
and recombinant viral gene transfer technologies for both academic and
industrial clients. BMGen has technologies, equipment, trained personnel,
know-how and insight how to integrate the technologies and analyze large
amounts of data for your benefit. Currently, our standard service products
are linked to two functional genomics technologies:
- Biochips for genome-wide gene expression and copy number profiling
(including e.g. RNA/DNA extraction, RNA quality assessment) and
- Recombinant virus products to perform functional gene analyses
(services including virus production, quality assessment and biosafety
analyses).
Partnering with BMGen provides even more options and
we can cover the whole analysis process from sample processing to data
analysis or from starting from gene lists and ending to genetically
manipulated cells.
The broader mission of BMGen is to promote nationwide and nordic
biotechnology development by providing academic and industrial clients
access to quality controlled functional genomics services that meet the
industry standards. Our key Research & Development strategy is that we
learn together with our customers how to build the most innovative
technology services to provide solutions for customized and general needs.
Therefore, it is clear to us that the success of our operations depends on
the quality of our interactions with customers.
Outi Monni,
Director, Biomedicum Genomics
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