AltheaDx last week announced the launch of its Affymetrix Drug Metabolizing Enzymes & Transporter genotyping microarray service.
According to the company, the new service provides biopharmaceutical clients with "a way to measure the genetics of drug metabolism in clinical trial patients — giving drug developers the opportunity to select patients that are more likely to respond."
AltheaDx will compile patients' genetic data in a report for customers, and this information can then be integrated into existing clinical trial protocols.
"The DMET report includes biomarker analysis from all US Food and Drug Administration-validated genes and more than 150 well-documented biomarkers known to impact drug metabolism," the company said in a statement. "In addition to these proven biomarkers, the report contains information on a total of 1,936 genetic variants in 225 enzyme and transporter genes, making it a useful tool for exploratory pharmacokinetic studies to identify new biomarkers such as variants in CYP4F2, recently discovered using DMET to explain 8 percent of warfarin dosing variability."
Bioconductor version 2.4 was released last week. The new version of the open-source genomic data analysis software, accessible here, includes 28 new software packages as well as upgrades of existing packages. In total, version 2.4 includes 320 software packages and is compatible with R version 2.9.0.
Some new packages in Bioconductor 2.4 include: AffyTiling Easy, which enables extraction of individual probes in Affymetrix tiling arrays; crlmm, a genotype-calling and copy number analysis tool for Affymetrix SNP 5.0 and 6.0 and Illumina arrays; and SSPA, which provides sample size and power analysis for microarray data.