NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Genomic analysis software maker BioDiscovery said today it will use a $157,000 grant from the National Cancer Institute to analyze and improve copy number variant data from The Cancer Genome Atlas program.
The Small Business Innovation Research grant will fund efforts to develop and commercialize CNV and sequence variant data that researchers will use in studies of tumorigenesis and disease progression, and which will provide a validation set for use in international studies.
The Hawthorne, Calif.-based company said the Huntsman Cancer Institute (NCI) and the University of Utah will help it develop and validate the cancer data offering that it aims take to market.
BioDiscovery offers tools for analyzing and visualizing data from next-generation sequencing and microarray platforms, including its flagship Nexus Copy Number software.
"We are applying methods, algorithms, and best practices learned from our experiences in clinical pathology settings to TCGA data," Soheil Shams, BioDiscovery's Chief Scientific Officer, said in a statement. "It's a painstaking process, but the result will be the highest-fidelity CNV data from TCGA, and will integrate with our analysis platform to let researchers quickly access and interrogate this database."