New Immune Atlas Targets Health Equity with Protein-Level Precision

MONTREAL, QC – June 16, 2026 – In a significant move to map the complexities of the human immune system, Nomic Bio Inc. has announced a collaboration with the world-renowned Wellcome Sanger Institute. The partnership will add a crucial layer of high-resolution protein data to Project JAGUAR, an ambitious initiative aimed at understanding immune diversity across genetically diverse populations in Latin America. By integrating Nomic's cutting-edge proteomics with existing genomic data, the collaboration is set to build one of the most comprehensive functional atlases of human immunity to date, promising to accelerate drug discovery and address long-standing gaps in health equity.

The collaboration will see Nomic deploy its Omni 1000 platform to perform large-scale proteomic profiling on over 1,500 samples derived from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). These samples, collected as part of Project JAGUAR, represent a unique and invaluable resource for understanding how our genetic makeup shapes the intricate workings of our immune defenses.

Beyond the Genome: Adding Function to the Genetic Blueprint

For decades, the field of genomics has been incredibly successful at identifying thousands of genetic variants associated with diseases. Yet, a fundamental challenge has remained: linking a specific gene to its actual biological function. Knowing a gene is associated with an autoimmune disease is one thing; understanding how it contributes to the disease mechanism is another, far more complex puzzle. This is the critical gap that the Nomic-Sanger collaboration aims to close.

While genomics provides the blueprint, proteomics—the large-scale study of proteins—reveals the functional machinery of the cell. Proteins are the workhorses that carry out the vast majority of biological processes, and they are the ultimate targets for most drugs. By measuring proteins directly, researchers can gain a dynamic, real-time view of cellular activity that is often impossible to glean from genetic data alone.

“Understanding how genetic diversity shapes immune function is essential for building a more complete picture of human disease biology,” said Dr. Gosia Trynka, Science Director at Open Targets and a Group Leader at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. “The protein-level measurements from Nomic’s platform will help capture functional immune responses that are difficult to infer from transcriptomic data alone, creating a more complete view of human immune variation and disease biology with potential for faster translation into therapies.”

At the heart of this effort is Nomic’s proprietary nELISA® technology. The platform is engineered to overcome a classic challenge in proteomics: measuring hundreds of different proteins from a single, small sample without the signals interfering with one another. This technology allows for the rapid and quantitative analysis of over 1,000 biologically relevant proteins, providing the scale and precision necessary to match the vast datasets generated by modern genomics.

Project JAGUAR: A Quest for Equitable Immune Health

The scientific impact of this collaboration is matched by its profound societal importance. Biomedical research has historically suffered from a severe diversity problem. A staggering percentage of data used in large-scale genetic studies comes from individuals of European ancestry, leaving vast swaths of the global population underrepresented. This bias has tangible consequences, leading to diagnostic tools and therapies that are less effective for people from other backgrounds.

Project JAGUAR (Joint Atlantic Genome Understanding through Ancestry and Regulation) was launched specifically to combat this disparity. It represents a coordinated effort between the Wellcome Sanger Institute and research institutions across Latin America to map the immune systems of populations that have been largely absent from major biomedical datasets. By establishing a biobank with donors from Mexico to Brazil, the project is creating a foundational resource for more equitable science.

“Project JAGUAR is building a unique cohort to study human immune biology in populations that have too often been absent from large-scale functional genomics,” noted Alejandra Medina Rivera, a co-principal investigator on the project from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). “By profiling samples from across Latin America, we can better understand how genetic diversity shapes immune responses and generate knowledge with broad and lasting relevance for biomedical research.”

Crucially, the project is built on a foundation of ethical partnership, rejecting the “helicopter science” model where foreign researchers collect samples and leave. Instead, it emphasizes local leadership, expertise, and long-term engagement with participating communities, ensuring the work is both sustainable and respectful.

The Power of Perturbation: Simulating Immunity in the Lab

This project goes far beyond static characterization. To truly understand how genetics influences immune function, researchers need to see the system in action. The experimental design of Project JAGUAR is uniquely tailored to achieve this. Scientists take the donated immune cells (PBMCs) and stimulate them in the laboratory, effectively modeling a patient-specific immune response to a challenge.

It is during this response that immune cells communicate by releasing a cascade of signaling proteins, such as cytokines. By using Nomic's platform to measure the levels of these secreted proteins, researchers can capture a direct readout of the functional output of the immune system. This allows them to draw a clear line from an individual's genetic code to their cellular state and, ultimately, to their functional immune behavior.

“Around the world, large collections of PBMC samples have been generated and stored alongside rich genetic and clinical data. These collections represent an enormous opportunity to move beyond static characterization and study human biology functionally,” said Milad Dagher, CEO at Nomic. “By perturbing PBMCs from genotyped donors and measuring protein-level responses at scale, Project JAGUAR researchers can connect genetic variation and cellular state to functional immune biology in ways that were previously difficult to achieve.”

Accelerating Discovery Through Open Collaboration

Ultimately, the goal of this fundamental research is to improve human health. The data generated through the Nomic-Sanger collaboration will feed into a powerful scientific ecosystem designed to do just that. The Wellcome Sanger Institute is a founding member of Open Targets, a public-private partnership that includes major pharmaceutical companies and is focused on using genetic and genomic data to improve the identification and prioritization of new therapeutic targets.

By integrating this new, multi-layered dataset of proteomic, genomic, and transcriptomic information, Open Targets and its collaborators can more effectively pinpoint the molecular mechanisms that drive disease. This deeper understanding is critical for de-risking the lengthy and expensive drug development process, helping to ensure that the most promising therapeutic strategies are advanced.

The insights from this collaboration will not be siloed. Data will be shared with strategic collaborators to advance the project’s scientific goals, amplifying its impact across the research community. This initiative represents a powerful convergence of technology, ethics, and collaborative science, paving the way for a future where precision medicine is truly personal and equitable for all.