On Jan. 9, 2014, the New York Genome Center (NYGC) announced that New York State Governor Andrew M. Cuomo proposed in his State of the State address a $105 million partnership between the NYGC and the University at Buffalo’s Center for Computational Research. The new partnership enabled genetic discoveries that will potentially save lives by transforming how health care impacts patients.

NYGC and UB will receive $55 million and $50 million from the state, respectively, to advance genetic data analysis and identify treatments that target tumors in individual patients. The New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences at UB has the medical records of at least a million New York residents that, when combined on a de-identified basis with genomic data from NYGC, can be used not only to develop new treatments for diseases but to link genetic mutations to environmental factors and inform public health policies.