LONDON - The genomics company Gemini Holdings plc has set up a joint venture in Newfoundland, Canada, to exploit the genetic homogeneity of the province. The 550,000 people who live there are mainly descended from a founder population of Irish, Scottish and English immigrants who arrived between the 1600s and the 1840s.

The company, Newfound Genomics, will be a 50-50 joint venture with Lineage Biomedical Inc., of St John's, Newfoundland. The aim will be to identify genes that predispose to common diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes and psoriasis, which show an increased prevalence in Newfoundland and Labrador. Given the ancestry of the population, the disease genes identified are likely to be the same ones that predispose other Caucasian populations to the diseases.

A research facility will be set up in St John's. Gemini, of Cambridge, England, will provide a limited license to its genomics technologies and will put in #8 million (US$12.9 million) to partly fund the operating costs of the new company for the first three years. Gemini will have first refusal on the commercialization of any genes discovered by the joint venture.

Howard Christley, chief medical officer of Gemini, told BioWorld International it has not been decided which disease to work on first. "An epidemiologist and a clinician are coming over [from Newfoundland] to discuss which diseases will be best suited to this approach. We know from some research already done in psoriasis that there are families with a high prevalence of this disease, and the initial work has found interesting linkages."

To show that genes discovered in Newfoundland are involved in causing the disease elsewhere, Gemini will cross reference the genes with its two other databases, one of phenotypes of non-identical twins and the second of patients with diseases. "Any gene discovered in the founder group needs to be replicated elsewhere and we have the resources to do this," Christley said.

He said the founder effect is not quite as strong as in Iceland, where the 250,000 inhabitants are mainly descended from Norsk settlers who colonized the island around the year 960. There, the genomics company deCode Genetics, based in Reykjavik, met serious opposition to its plans to exploit the genetic homogeneity of the population to uncover disease genes.

Newfound Genomics says any DNA it collects will remain in Newfoundland. It has undertaken to give a royalty on revenues generated from any commercialization of its discoveries to a foundation to benefit the people of the province. Canada's minister for health, Allan Rock, endorsed the formation of the company in a recent visit to the province, saying it underscored the "value to science of the unique medical characteristics of Newfoundland and Labrador's population."