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Supporting those who support us all – Coronagenes Study, University of Edinburgh

As part of our continued pro-bono efforts, we are proud to have recently teamed up with the University of Edinburgh Medical Research Council Human Genetics Unit (MRC-HGU) to assist them with the security of their Coronagenes Study.

The Coronagenes Study aims to understand how genetics can influence why some people get very ill with COVID-19 and others don’t by studying participants from around the world. Participants are asked to report their symptoms online and if they have already had their DNA assayed through a private company, to upload their genome data to the University of Edinburgh servers for research. However, everybody can help the Coronagenes Study, even if they haven’t got their DNA assayed and is encouraged by the University of Edinburgh team to join the study at https://www.ed.ac.uk/coronagenes. The Coronagenes Team says: “Everyone, everywhere can help our study. Even by just spreading the word via Facebook, Twitter and Instagram”.

With such sensitive personal data being processed, the University of Edinburgh wanted to ensure that robust security measures were in place and we are extremely proud to have been given the opportunity to be a part of such a vital research project.

Albert Tenesa, Professor of Quantitative Genetics at the University of Edinburgh and co-lead of the Coronagenes Study, commented “I am very grateful to the Pentest team for their pro-bono help. The Coronagenes team has worked non-stop from the beginning of the Pandemic to bring this project to fruition and has worked side to side with Pentest to improve the security of our eRecruitment system. This is an extraordinary example of human collaboration”.

We’d like to thank the team from the University of Edinburgh for all their time and wish them all the best in their work to identify the genes that could potentially inform new treatments.

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