MedGenome Launches Ophthatome Knowledgebase at ARVO 2018

FOSTER CITY, Calif., April 27, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- MedGenome announced the launch of Ophthatome^TM Knowledgebase, a database with more than 500,000 clinical phenotype records for ocular research at ARVO 2018, the annual meeting of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology. Ophthatome Knowledgebase was developed by MedGenome in collaboration with Narayana Nethralaya, a leading specialty eye-care hospital network based in Bangalore, India, and will be demonstrated at the conference April 29 - May 3.

“Our new database addresses a huge unmet need in ocular research globally. Complex diseases that feature a diverse manifestation of phenotypes and sub-phenotypes require large-scale studies with comprehensive longitudinal and clinical data to unlock the mysteries of disease and uncover how best to develop therapies for them,” said Sam Santhosh, founder, chairman and global CEO of MedGenome. “Thanks to the collaboration with Narayana Nethralaya, we have amassed more than a half million multilayered/multifaceted records that our big-data analytics can now mine in collaboration with pharma companies and researchers.”

“The heavy burden of ocular diseases requires concerted research efforts to bring innovative medicines to the clinic,” said Dr. Arkasubhra Ghosh, Research Director, from Narayana Nethralaya. “We’re confident that our collaboration and the knowledgebase being generated will result in discoveries for the hundreds of millions of people who suffer from eye diseases globally.”

An estimated 253 million people live with vision impairment, with 36 million being blind and 217 million with moderate to severe vision impairment, according to a study published last year in Lancet Global Health. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(17)30293-0/fulltext

The World Health Organization reported chronic eye diseases are the leading cause of vision loss globally, and more than 80% of all vision impairment can be prevented or cured. http://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/blindness-and-visual-impairment

According to the recent reports from the American Academy of Ophthalmology, an estimated 7.3 million people in the U.S. will have Primary Open-Angle Glaucoma (POAG) by the year 2050. Nearly 2.1 million Americans aged 50 and older have late Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD) and an estimated 7.7 million Americans aged 40 and older suffer from Diabetic Retinopathy.

Research into these complex diseases is expected to provide much-needed insights to diagnose and treat these conditions better in the future. Ophthatome Knowledgebase contains ophthalmic, clinical, biochemical, diagnostic imaging and therapeutic intervention data on more than 525 disease types and about 1,800 disease sub-types of 31 eye parts and features more than 40 clinical variables and about 372,000 images. It enables genomic, pharmacogenomic, clinical research and discovery support for ocular diseases and provides researchers with a platform to design studies that address critical unmet needs in eye disorders.

The searchable interface allows researchers to build complex queries to select disease cohorts based on organs affected, disease type and subtype, the age of disease onset, drug response and many other clinical and phenotypic parameters. Further DNA sequencing and genetic analysis can be performed to establish disease associations. A product demonstration will be available at the MedGenome booth #832 at ARVO 2018.

MedGenome Talk at ARVO April 30: Complex Eye Diseases Unraveled

MedGenome will host a scientific talk entitled “Unravelling complex eye disease through analysis of big data,” presented by Professor Paul Baird, Center for Eye Research Australia, at the conference at 1 pm, April 30, 2018.

Building on MedGenome’s Big-data Offerings

Building on its big-data offerings, Ophthatome Knowledgebase is MedGenome’s second innovative platform for research into complex diseases. Its Diabetome^TM Knowledgebase provides data from more than 300,000 patients so that researchers have access to demographics, clinical characteristics, biochemical results, family history, treatment history, drug responses, genotypes as well as secondary complications of diabetes.

Diabetome facilitates the study of a large number of familial cases over multiple generations and provides information on the trio and first-degree relatives affected families, as well as consanguineous families, and comprehensive phenotype, genotype and family pedigree information via pedigree charts with age of onset.

ABOUT MEDGENOME:

MedGenome Inc. is a global leader in genomics research and a superior partner to pharma/biotech companies and academic research institutions conducting complex disease biomarker-identification projects.

We have unique molecular-level insights into populations that suffer from inherited diseases at twice the rate of people in the United States and Europe thanks to our leadership in genomics-based diagnostics and research in India. About 5,000 isolated population groups there feature extreme homogeneity or similarity within the group, yet significant heterogeneity, or differentiation between them. These groups are ideal for large-scale genetic-research studies for biomarker discovery. Our global footprint includes laboratories in the United States, Singapore and India.

Our over 400 employees and expert scientists use industry-leading tools and solutions, bioinformatics and big-data analytics to unlock rich genomic insights into rare and complex diseases including cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, metabolic diseases, ophthalmological disorders, neurological diseases and rare inherited disorders. Our headquarters is in Foster City, California.

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MedGenome Inc.
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