NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Healthcare IT firm GNS Healthcare is collaborating with the National Cancer Institute to help determine what treatments may work best for individuals with non-small cell lung cancer.
Under the deal announced this week, GNS will use its REFS platform to create computer models of NSCLC in a hypothesis-free, unbiased manner that will be simulated to identify key molecular mechanisms of the disease. Ultimately, the partners hope to identify biomarkers and biological mechanisms that can help guide treatments for NSCLC patients, as well as result in more effective new drugs.
The REFS platform is comprised of integrated machine learning algorithms and software that extract "causal" relationships from complex data "to explore novel unseen conditions and predictions forward in time," the Cambridge, Mass.-based company said.
GNS will analyze data from the laboratory of Terry van Dyke, director of the Center for Advanced Preclinical Research at NCI. The data was generated from genetically modified mouse models of NSCLC.
Financial and other terms of the partnership were not disclosed.
Earlier this year, GNS and NCI said they were partnering to analyze the institute's NCI-60 cancer cell line panel for pharmacogenomic purposes.