NEW YORK – Swiss informatics startup Abrinca Genomics is taking a stab at the microbial research market with its web-based genome analysis platform that promises to streamline data management and comparative studies.
The University of Bern spinout recently received CHF 150,000 ($177,270) from Venture Kick to help boost sales and marketing of its OpenGenomeBrowser software, which it currently offers to customers in industry and academia.
OpenGenomeBrowser "allows biologists to directly analyze the genomics data without needing to go through a bioinformatician," said Abrinca Cofounder and CEO Thomas Roder, who developed the software as a graduate student at the University of Bern. "It frees up time for the biologists to really focus on [answering] the biological questions."
To use the software, researchers upload assembled microbial genomes to the platform. From there, they can perform a series of analyses, such as building phylogenetic trees, carrying out BLAST searches for nucleotide or protein sequences, creating dot plots to compare genome assemblies, visualizing biochemical pathways, and identifying candidate genes associated with an observed phenotype using the software's gene-trait-matching algorithm.
Roder said OpenGenomeBrowser was developed by integrating many open-source microbial genome analysis tools with custom algorithms, and the platform is linked to major public microbial genomics databases. It currently does not support metagenomics analyses and is not compatible with raw sequencing data, though Roder said the company will continue to add more features to the software based on customer demand.
Abrinca spun out of the University of Bern in 2023 and has inked an agreement with the university to turn OpenGenomeBrowser from an academic pipeline into a commercial product. According to Tom Howze, the firm's chief commercial officer, the software is currently priced at roughly CHF 50,000 ($59,000) per annual license, though pricing depends on the number of users and an institution's size.
Abrinca's current target customers are labs from the food and biotech industry, he said, as well as academic researchers studying microbial genomics. He highlighted Agroscope, the Swiss center of excellence for agricultural research affiliated with the country's Federal Office for Agriculture, as one of Abrinca's major customers, adding that the company is currently in talks with industry and academic labs in Europe and the US.
OpenGenomeBrowser is not the only solution in the market for microbial genome analysis. The Integrated Microbial Genomes & Microbiomes data management system developed by the US Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute, for instance, is a free tool for researchers to annotate and study microbial genomes as well as metagenomic data. In addition, the MicroScope platform hosted by the French National Sequencing Center as well as the zDB software, developed by University of Lausanne researchers, are all tools to help researchers study and analyze microbial genomics.
It also remains to be seen whether OpenGenomeBrowser will be taken up by labs with their own bioinformatics resources that are able to write their own analysis pipelines for microbial studies.
Roder said one advantage of Abrinca's platform is that users can run it locally to protect proprietary genomics. Additionally, he claimed that OpenGenomeBrowser has a more user-friendly interface with better technical support and customer service than some of the open platforms.
In addition to selling its software, Abrinca also provides customers with tailored training sessions as well as on-demand consulting services, according to Howze.
Moving forward, Roder said Abrinca is working to develop more analysis tools that will extend OpenGenomeBrowser's ecosystem. The first will be a software that allows researchers to analyze large phenotypic datasets in microbial genome-wide association studies.
Based in Bern, Abrinca is currently supported by revenues and several local government grants. The recent funding from Venture Kick will allow the company to dial up its marketing efforts for OpenGenomeBrowser, Howze said.