Ariadne said this week that Georgetown University has taken a site license for its Pathway Studio software to assist in cancer research efforts, as well as to enable investigators to share their research findings via the Georgetown Database of Cancer, or G-DOC, initiative.
Pathway Studio allows researchers to mine, integrate, analyze, and visualize results individually or as an integrated workflow. Each step can be saved and then updated or modified as new information becomes available. Separate analyses can be combined or intersected for advanced applications and discovery.
Ilya Mazo, president of Ariadne, said that his firm's "expertise in developing biological knowledgebases for disease modeling fits nicely into Georgetown Lombardi's vision and goals."
In a statement, Subha Madhavan, director of clinical research informatics at Georgetown Lombardi, highlighted the importance of translational medicine as an "investigative tool" for identifying "biomarkers and surrogate markers involved with disease or therapeutic response."
In particular, she said that GU was seeking tools "that can help integrate published findings with our microRNA experimental data."
Georgetown University's Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center launched G-DOC last October to provide a repository of cancer information and tools. At the time of the launch, G-DOC contained genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, methylomics, and transcriptomics data from tumors, as well as clinical treatment and outcome information, for about 2,953 breast cancer patients.
The web-based platform includes a genome viewer that let users visualize multiple data types and supports flexible clinical criteria browsing to enable specific cohort selection and generate detailed reports, among other features (BI 10/03/2011).