IN THE PRESS
SickKids and VUS Genetics Collaborate to Advance Gene Variant Testing with SickKids-Developed Genomics Platform
The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) and its Industry Partnerships & Commercialization (IP&C) team are pleased to announce a new collaboration with VUS Genetics, focused on further developing geneSlice™, a functional genomics platform created at SickKids. This agreement supports ongoing work to improve the testing and interpretation of gene variants identified through genetic sequencing — an important challenge in precision medicine.
In many cases, DNA sequencing identifies genetic variants whose significance is uncertain, making it difficult for clinicians and families to understand their relevance for diagnosis and treatment.
“The geneSlice™ platform was developed to address this fundamental gap in genetic medicine,” says Dr. Zhenya Ivakine, geneSlice™ inventor and Senior Scientist in the Genetics & Genome Biology program at SickKids. “By combining endogenous gene editing with scalable cellular models, we can now generate the experimental evidence needed to reclassify and interpret these variants with confidence.”
Under the terms of the agreement, VUS Genetics has obtained an exclusive license to advance geneSlice™ toward potential clinical applications in drug response evaluation and variant interpretation. SickKids and VUS Genetics will continue to engage as scientific and technical partners as the platform develops.
“We are proud to partner with one of the world’s leading paediatric research hospitals. The exclusive license to geneSlice™ provides VUS Genetics with a foundational technology that we believe will set the new standard for functional variant testing.”
Supporting Precision Child Health
This collaboration reflects SickKids’ broader commitment to Precision Child Health — an approach to care that seeks to understand the unique genetic, clinical, and environmental factors influencing each child’s health and wellbeing. By enabling deeper insight into how specific gene variants’ function, geneSlice™ contributes to efforts to support the use of genomic data in informing diagnostic and care decisions.
About geneSliceTM
The geneSliceTM technology enables systematic, scalable functional testing of genetic variants, providing clinicians and researchers with the evidence needed to reclassify VUS findings and support more precise diagnoses and treatment approaches. geneSliceTM combines cutting-edge gene editing tools with advanced cellular models to deliver reproducible, clinically meaningful results.
geneSliceTM is a proprietary gene-editing and functional genomics platform developed in the laboratory of Dr. Zhenya Ivakine at SickKids.
About VUS Genetics
VUS Genetics is a genomics focused company dedicated to innovating patient stratification for personalised treatment approaches. By building a scalable gene editing and data intelligence platform for drug response testing of gene variants and partnering with leading biotech and pharma companies in addition to leading academic medical centres, VUS Genetics aims to provide clinicians and patients with definitive answers by enabling informed interpretation of NGS DNA sequencing data. The company is committed to accelerating the clinical utility of next-generation genomic tools.
