HP Partners with Malaysian Bioinformatics Startup
The Star, a Malaysian newspaper, reported last week that Hewlett-Packard Sales Malaysia is partnering with bioinformatics startup Synamatix on a combined software and hardware solution for genetic data management.
Under the partnership, Synamatix will release its Linux-based genetic sequence database solution SynaSuite on Intel Itanium 2-based servers from HP.
According to the report, SynaSuite will be available in the Malaysian market by early next year.
Nonlinear in OEM Deal with PerkinElmer
Nonlinear Dynamics has signed an OEM distribution agreement with PerkinElmer to develop new 2D gel analysis software.
Under the agreement, which builds upon a partnership the companies entered in 2001, Nonlinear will develop the software, called ProFinder, exclusively for PerkinElmer to market. The software will be available in June, Nonlinear said.
The companies did not reveal financial terms of the partnership.
Nonlinear also has a distribution partnership for its proteomics software with Amersham Biosciences.
Galileo Genomics Selects LabVantage, FGT as IT partners for Pharmacogenomics
Galileo Genomics said last week that it would use First Genetic Trust’s enTrust genetic banking platform to provide pharmacogenomics services to pharma and biotech companies, and that it had signed a software and services agreement with LabVantage for its Sapphire Life Sciences LIMS to manage microsatellite and SNP data.
In the collaboration with FGT, Galileo will analyze data from patients in the Quebec founder population using its high-throughput genotyping, bioinformatics, and statistical analysis capabilities, and provide pharmacogenomics data to drug discovery firms.
The company said it would use the LabVantage LIMS to manage data from studies involving over three billion genotypes on DNA samples from approximately 60,000 patients, relatives, and controls.
NCBI Provides Standard Model for Electronic Journal Articles
Last week, the National Center for Biotechnology Information released two document type definitions (DTDs) that will “simplify journal publishing and increase the accuracy of the archiving and exchange of scholarly journal articles,” according to David Lipman, director of the NCBI.
NCBI created the “Journal Publishing DTD” to define a common format for the creation of journal content in XML, and the “Archiving and Interchange DTD,” which also defines journal articles, but also provides a common format in which publishers, aggregators, and archives can exchange journal content.
Complete information and documentation on the DTDs can be found at http://dtd.nlm.nih.gov.
NSF, NIH Launch Initiative to Build Collaborative Research Tools
The NSF and NIH have jointly launched a program to develop tools for sharing data in collaborative research projects.
Grants will be awarded for projects to develop collaborative tools and techniques that manage and analyze large amounts of data that need to be shared among several research groups.
Specifically, topics of interest include tools and techniques for collaborative analysis, access, and visualization of data; tools and techniques that ensure that new collaboration technologies are compatible with emerging middleware standards, including security and authentication controls; tools that facilitate communication among collaborators; and tools and techniques that facilitate the creation and curation of data repositories used in a collaborative fashion.
The full program announcement is available at http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAR-03-134.html.
Letters of intent for the project are due on August 15 2003, and June 15, 2004.
Sybase Donates Database Software to China’s CDC for SARS Research
Sybase said last week that it has donated data management technology to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention to aid in the prevention, control, and research of SARS.
The China CDC will use the Sybase technology to build a data analysis system that will enable the country’s medical departments and institutes to more quickly analyze and act upon data.
Products donated include the company’s Sybase IQ, Enterprise Application Server, Adaptive Server Enterprise, PowerBuilder, and PowerDesigner software products.