Science Spotlight: Regeneron’s genomics-derived metabolic target

Exome sequencing of over a million people identified rare, beneficial loss-of-function variants in FNIP1, making a causal human biology case for the energy expenditure-regulating scaffolding protein as a cardiometabolic target.

In a cohort of 1,032,116 individuals from America, Europe and Asia, a team led by the Regeneron Genetics Center unit of  Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:REGN) found that protein-truncating variants in FNIP1 lowered the ratio of triglycerides to high-density lipoprotein cholesterol by about 0.5 standard deviations. The ratio is a widely used marker of cardiometabolic disease risk...