Collaboration
London Genetics Limited, the company set up to commercialise genetic research at seven universities and research institutes in the city, has announced a strategic partnership with the US bioinformatics specialist Diaceutics Limited of Washington, DC to develop software decision tools that will provide biopharmaceutical companies with rapid and extensive access to the world’s leading academic biomarker research groups.
The new tools will enable commercial biomarker research teams to comprehensively explore global biomarker resources to identify genes and gene sequences, and to identify researchers and clinicians relevant to their targeted therapy research.
The new software, which is expected to be launched in 2011, is based on the Diaceutics Fusion platform, a personalised medicine planning software application for targeted therapy development teams, in combination with London Genetics’ Biomarker Pathway platform.
The tools the two partners plan to develop will allow research teams to build biomarker hypotheses, request expressions of interest and prepare proposals for clinical development. The expressions of interest, requesting access to patient samples and investigator networks, will be sent to academic biomarker research teams globally, including London Genetics’ own network of over 3,000 investigators in a broad range of therapeutic areas and technology disciplines. In this way, partners can be rapidly identified and collaborative projects instigated.
“We are delighted to partner with London Genetics, leverage its biomarker expertise, and together build tools that will address a key problem for therapy development teams,” said Peter Keeling, CEO of Diaceutics. “Biomarker research is often limited because teams don’t know the capabilities of external research centres and miss potential collaborations which could accelerate their targeted therapy development.”
“This strategic alliance with Diaceutics fits closely with our overall goal to expedite pharmacogenetic and biomarker partnerships between industry and academia for more effective targeted drug development,” said Dominique Kleyn, CEO of London Genetics. “We look forward to working with new industry partners identified via the tools we are developing with Diaceutics.”
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