INDUSTRY

Computational biology firm Genedata announces a new collaboration with Wyeth Pharma to support the computational requirements of Wyeth’s drug discovery efforts in Cambridge (MA), USA. Wyeth’s installation of Genedata Expressionist and Phylosopher will provide a highly automated processing and annotation platform capable of analyzing tens of thousands of microarrays per month. “We believe there is an excellent fit between Genedata and Wyeth’s approach to drug discovery”, said Dr. Jens Hoefkens, Managing Director of Genedata Inc. Wyeth showcased its research approach, including its innovative use of cross-functional teams, at this year’s Laboratory Informatics meeting in San Diego, CA. Genedata’s solution has been integrated with Wyeth’s existing informatics infrastructure, including databases of experimental protocol information, to create powerful new analysis portals for complex omics data. These portals enable researchers to navigate large result repositories and drill down to obtain data quality and experimental design information. Dr. Hoefkens added, “This is valuable when information must be shared among researchers with different areas of technical expertise”. Wyeth’s scientific business rules have also been integrated with Genedata’s automated workflows for processing and analyzing gene expression data. So far, many such business rules have been incorporated into Expressionist’s workflow environment. These rules are applied in the context of data quality issues. They extend to statistical criteria applied to results, such as the statistical significance level used to define biomarkers. This increases the repeatability of research findings obtained in a high-throughput context. “We are proud to provide Wyeth with our computational infrastructure for large-scale gene expression analysis”, said Dr. Othmar Pfannes, CEO of Genedata. Automation, and the establishment of a systematic framework for navigating results, is critical in the context of large-scale research operations. Dr. Pfannes added, “This collaboration reflects Genedata’s commitment to help customers gain the greatest benefit from investment in high-throughput omics technologies”.