NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) — BC Platforms said today that it has signed an agreement with Nashville Biosciences' to include summary data from Nashville's BioVU clinical genomics research database in its Bcrquest.com global biobank analytics platform.
BioVU — created and housed at Vanderbilt University Medical Center — contains more than 250,000 DNA samples and 2.8 million de-identified patient records. Nashville Biosciences was formed by VUMC earlier this year to offer BioVU data- and phenome-wide association study-based services to the pharmaceutical and diagnostic industries.
Under the terms of the deal, Zurich-based BC Platforms will link summary data about BioVU to its Bcrquest.com platform for secure data sharing, analytics, and governance, which will allow researchers to perform queries to estimate counts for a potential study cohort and determine the feasibility of the study. Researchers can then work with Nashville Biosciences and other biobanks participating in Bcrquest.com to conduct their planned study, BC Platforms said.
Additional terms were not disclosed.
"Working with BC Platforms' will extend the impact of BioVU to support researchers in efficient drug and diagnostics discovery and development, while still protecting the integrity of the biobank and the data it has been entrusted with," Nashville Biosciences COO Leeland Ekstrom said in a statement.
In September, THL Biobank — hosted by the Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare — joined BC Platform's biobank network.