ROCKVILLE, Md., June 9, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Strand Genomics Inc. (Strand) announced today that company representatives will demonstrate new capabilities of the company’s clinical genomics interpretation software, StrandOmics, at the 2014 International Collaboration for Clinical Genomics (ICCG) Annual Conference on June 11 and 12 in Bethesda, Maryland. The conference brings together thought leadership in clinical genomics from around the world with an emphasis on the importance of sharing information and advancing best practices. In support of that effort, Strand will highlight one of StrandOmics’ new features, which allows laboratories curating variants with the software to submit those variants to the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) public ClinVar database and to share with the community-at-large.
“We will demonstrate a community integration feature at the ICCG conference that lets StrandOmics users easily and automatically submit clinically curated variants to the ClinVar database. This shows Strand’s continued commitment to open standards development and community participation,” said Dr. Vijay Chandru, Chairman & CEO of Strand.
StrandOmics was designed to assist users with the clinical interpretation and reporting of genomic variants for conditions ranging from cancer (germline and somatic mutations) to rare inherited diseases in a way that follows clinical laboratory workflows, including HIPAA and CLIA compliance.StrandOmics combines a vast, knowledgebase that associates DNA variants with consolidated sources for clinical phenotypes, including the medical literature, with the ability to access the original source of information. The knowledgebase currently contains about 175,000 variants from both public and private sources including ClinVar, the Human Gene Mutation Database (HGMD®) and Strand’s proprietary curated content, StrandVarDB, which is growing at a rate of about 10,000 new variant references every month.
“StrandOmics provides all the scientific and medical information needed by medical geneticists to classify the variants in a patient’s DNA that are associated with diseases. This allows users to annotate variants and to generate reports that aide physicians in making accurate diagnoses faster,” said Dr. Preveen Ramamoorthy, Vice President, Clinical Diagnostics, Strand.
In addition to enabling the interpretation and sharing of variants, StrandOmics supports one-click report generation that automatically integrates and formats references and citations. “Based on the feedback we have received from leading academic research hospitals in the USA as part of our Early Access Program, we have significantly enhanced the utility and usability of StrandOmics and included several new and exciting features including a transcript-level view of the impact of variants,” said Dr. Ramesh Hariharan, Strand’s CTO.
This additional view provides a bird’s eye picture of all published disease-causing variants juxtaposed on the various gene transcripts, allowing users to quickly spot patterns of pathogenicity or zygosity in different transcripts and at different gene loci.
With StrandOmics, Strand puts high powered and easy to use personalized medicine solutions directly into the hands of clinical researchers and, ultimately, practicing clinicians. StrandOmics is routinely used on hundreds of samples to power Strand Center labs and serve more than 50 hospital customers in India. It is available worldwide for research and evaluation purposes as a continuation of its Early Access Program. StrandOmics is expected to be commercially available for research use only (FRUO) this fall.
About Strand Genomics Inc.
Founded in 2000, Strand Genomics Inc. is a leader in technology innovations for healthcare using genomics. Strand’s entry into healthcare was through software products and services that combine advanced visualization, systems modeling, and scientific insights for enabling biological and health sciences research. Over 2000 research labs worldwide (about 30% of global market share) and 50 hospitals have adopted Strand’s genomics solutions today. These include leading clinical research, pharmaceutical and biotechnology organizations. With a highly skilled interdisciplinary workforce of more than 200 computer and life scientists, Strand has set up three clinical and translational research laboratories in Bangalore that are enabled with cutting-edge Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies. Strand is a portfolio company of Biomark Capital Partners, a San Francisco based global fund for health and life sciences. By enabling DNA sequence-based diagnostics and clinical genomic data interpretation using a strong foundation of computational, scientific, and medical expertise, Strand is bringing personalized medicine to the world.
For more information, visit www.strandgenomics.com or follow us on twitter: @StrandLife
SOURCE Strand Genomics Inc.
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