BioDiscovery, Inc. Awarded National Institutes of Health (NIH) SBIR Grant To Improve TCGA Copy Number Profiles

Hawthorne, CA, July 8, 2014 -- BioDiscovery, Inc., maker of Nexus Copy Number software, announced today the award of a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I grant from the National Institute of Health to improve the copy number variation (CNV) data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), and has selected Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah to assist in developing and validating the new product. The commercial release of the improved TCGA copy number and sequence variant data will let researchers make further discoveries into tumorigenesis and disease progression and provide a meaningful validation set for internal studies.

“Our techniques for analyzing CNVs from raw data is unique and has proven highly effective, being used and cited in hundreds of publications.” says Soheil Shams, Ph.D., BioDiscovery’s Chief Scientific Officer. “We are applying methods, algorithms, and best practices learned from our experiences in clinical pathology settings to TCGA data. It’s a painstaking process, but the result will be the highest-fidelity CNV data from TCGA, and will integrate with our analysis platform to let researches quickly access and interrogate this database.”

“Copy number aberrations have been established as important drivers of many types of cancer, and as distinct from tumor classes driven primarily by somatic mutations,” says Louis Culot, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at BioDiscovery. “The NIH has recognized this, along with BioDiscovery’s unique expertise in CNV data analysis in the issue of this award. We are pleased to begin this work and expect it to have significant impact on further understanding of cancer genetics."

Joshua Schiffman, M.D., medical director of the High Risk Pediatric Cancer Clinic at Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) and associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Utah will be the lead investigator on the HCI arm of the project. “The TCGA project, funded by NIH, has amazing potential but has proven challenging to unlock due to the processing of CNV information and difficulty in data access and analysis,” says Schiffman. “At HCI, we will work with the BioDiscovery team to help test and validate their approach to improved interaction with TCGA data sets. Results from these efforts will further our understanding of many types of cancer and hopefully lead to improved clinical care for patients.” As part of the SBIR grant, Schiffman will work with BioDiscovery to demonstrate the clinical utility and translational impact of the TCGA data.

About BioDiscovery

BioDiscovery produces software and databases for genomic analysis, including its flagship Nexus Copy Number software. The Company offers simple yet powerful tools for CNV and sequence variation analysis and visualization from microarrays and next generation sequencing platforms (NGS), for analysis of complex data such as solid tumor samples and complex constitutional disease. The scientist-driven software embeds powerful statistical tools designed specifically for the end-user, allowing rapid detection of chromosomal aberrations and identification of affected pathways. For more information about BioDiscovery, please visit www.biodiscovery.com.

Source: BioDiscovery, Inc.

Media Contact: Louis J. Culot Vice President, Business Development and Marketing +1 617-233-4921 lculot@biodiscovery.com

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