NEW YORK — Bioinformatics firm Golden Helix said on Tuesday that it has received a roughly $400,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health supporting its efforts to integrate pharmacogenetics analytics into next-generation sequencing-based genetic tests.
With the six-month Small Business Innovation Research award, Golden Helix aims to develop and validate methods for automating the identification and interpretation of pharmacogenetic variants, as well as integrating these findings into clinical reports for healthcare providers, according to the grant's abstract. The project will also involve evaluating the clinical utility of pharmacogenetic testing by NGS, assessing its influence on treatment decisions, patient outcomes, and healthcare costs.
"Our long-term goal is to support healthcare providers to enhance clinical outcomes, reduce adverse drug reactions, and achieve cost-effective healthcare by integrating pharmacogenomics into routine clinical practice," Golden Helix President and CEO Andreas Scherer said in a statement.
Since 2017, the Bozeman, Montana-based company has won $4 million in NIH awards. In late 2018, for example, Golden Helix received $1.8 million in SBIR funding to improve its detection algorithms for complex variants in NGS data.