Comprehensive database will enhance drug r&d
Genomics Collaborative (GCI), of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Heidelberg-based Lion Bioscience have created a comprehensive database of demographic, epidemiological and medical information that complements GCI's Global Repository, a database consisting of more than 115,000 human DNA, serum and tissue samples from patients worldwide.
Genomics Collaborative (GCI), of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Heidelberg-based Lion Bioscience have created a comprehensive database of demographic, epidemiological and medical information that complements GCI's Global Repository, a database consisting of more than 115,000 human DNA, serum and tissue samples from patients worldwide.
The new database, GCI Clinical, provides real-time integration of clinical, genotypic, RNA expression and proteomic expression data that will enable GCI and its customers to identify more rapidly and better understand drug targets and pathways that were previously inaccessible. It combines access to pathology reports, histological information, diagnostic reports, specimen quality control data, detailed clinical information, public domain databases, and genotypic expression, and eventually proteomic data for each collected sample.
GCI Clinical allows researchers to select DNA, RNA, tissue and serum from a cohort of patients with a specific phenotype from GCI's Global Repository. Each query can then be linked to information on a particular sample's availability, storage, location, concentration and condition. Furthermore it offers query tools to enable scientists to link the physical specimens along with accompanying clinical and all experimental data to the growing wealth of public and proprietary data on the specific disease state and biological pathways of interest.
To improve the efficiency of its HT genotyping pipeline, GCI has also used Lion's SRS technology to merge the human genome sequence and publicly available single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) databases into its GCI Clinical system. This integration has enabled GCI to automate in silico QC analyses for each of the 2.7m SNPs in the public databases. Armed with this knowledge, GCI's researchers can ensure vastly improved SNP selection from any region of the genome, drastically enhancing both genotyping accuracy and throughput.
'GCI Clinical is the most advanced system for integrating the information that drug developers require for critical decisions on target discovery and validation,' said Dr Michael J. Pellini, ceo of GCI.