Hawthorne, CA, October 22, 2015 – Great strides have been made over the last 10-20 years in cancer research and resulting treatments. In the genomics era, discoveries have evolved even more rapidly with the use of high-throughput technologies including microarrays and sequencing and associated bioinformatics analysis software, greatly increasing the knowledge gained from genomic interrogations of various organisms.
Dr. Matthew Breen, Oscar J. Fletcher Distinguished Professor of Comparative Oncology Genetics at North Carolina State University, has been working on genomics and comparative analysis of canine cancer for many years. His lab uses high-throughput technologies such are microarrays and next-generation sequencing to study the genomics of canine cancer and evolutionary conserved regions shared with the human genome. One of the tools instrumental in his study of copy number variation is BioDiscovery’s Nexus Copy Number software. Using Nexus Copy Number, Dr. Breen and his team have demonstrated that several of the DNA copy number changes detected by CGH analysis in canine cancers are highly conserved with the corresponding cancers in humans. Results from such comparative studies of leukemias, bladder cancers and melanomas were recently published in Chromosome Research1,2,3. Dr. Breen stated that “Nexus Copy Number is a powerful tool in our workflow, allowing direct visualization of data from numerous platforms, with a graphical interface that is as appealing as it is informative”.
Dr. Breen’s work on genome-wide studies of tumor bearing dogs and DNA copy number signatures associated with canine cancer subtypes provides strong evidence for a shared pathogenetic origin of several cancers affecting both humans and dogs. On Oct. 27, he will be presenting an overview of this work at a webinar, Comparative cytogenomics – a translational approach to accelerate cancer gene discovery. Two sessions will be presented and anyone interested in learning more or attending a session can do so here.
Nexus Copy Number software is a leading platform independent and user-friendly application offering simple yet powerful tools for copy number and sequence variation analysis and visualization from CGH arrays, SNP arrays, as well as next-generation sequencing technologies. The software is applicable to many types of studies from small projects to large scale cancer or GWAS studies and offers many specialized tools for analysis of complex data such as solid tumor samples. 1Roode S, Rotroff D, Avery AC, Suter SE, Bienzle, D, Schiffman JD, et al. Genome-wide assessment of recurrent genomic imbalances in canine leukemia identifies evolutionarily conserved regions for subtype differentiation. Chromosome Res. 2015 Jun 3. [Epub ahead of print].
2Shapiro, S.G., Raghunath, S., Williams, C., Motsinger-Reif, A., Cullen, J.M., Liu, T., Albertson, D., Ruvolo, M., Bergstrom Lucas, A., Jin, J., Knapp, D. Schiffman, J.D. and Breen, M (2015). Canine urothelial carcinoma: genomically aberrant and comparatively relevant. Chromosome Research 23:311–331
3Kelsey Poorman, Luke Borst, Scott Moroff, Siddharth Roy, Philippe Labelle, Alison Motsinger-Reif, and Matthew Breen (2015). Comparative Cytogenetic Characterization of Primary Canine Melanocytic Lesions using Array CGH and Fluorescence in situ Hybridization. Chromosome Research 23:171-186.
About BioDiscovery, Inc.
BioDiscovery, Inc. is dedicated to the development of state-of-the-art software products for life science research as well as clinical applications. The company’s mission is to enable scientists to eliminate disease and suffering through application of computational technologies and translating these findings directly and rapidly to clinical use. From its inception in 1997, BioDiscovery has been an innovative leader in the genomics field having introduced the first dedicated commercial software tool for analyzing microarray images. Since then, innovation has continued to be a top priority. BioDiscovery’s passion to make a difference has further extended the company’s reach into creating the most comprehensive enterprise-wide system enabling research findings to translate into clinical applications and make direct impact on patient care. For more information, visit http://www.biodiscovery.com.
Contact information:
Shalini Verma
MarCom Manager
310-414-8100
MarCom@biodiscovery.com
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