Silico Insights, a bioinformatics tools provider based in Woburn, Mass., has developed a set of proprietary algorithms to establish patterns in gene expression and proteomics data that could be extended to cover the entire drug development pipeline, said Christos Hatzis, vice president of technology.
“Today’s bioinformatics portfolio is inadequate to meet the complex needs of post-genomic research,” said Hatzis. He said that the company’s algorithms would help enable a better understanding of the pathways and networks between genes, proteins, and drugs.
Silico Insights expects to begin deploying i-Sight, a platform based on the algorithms, before July.
“We’re backwards integrating into discovery to link proteomics and clinical data,” Hatzis told BioInform. “It’s the first step to getting to practical functional genomics.”
The i-Sight platform includes a pre-processing data normalization step and then applies an array of clustering techniques and predictive algorithms to analyze gene expression and proteomics profiles. The algorithms evaluate patterns using time-shifted correlation analysis and rank gene expression-proteomic associations based on the correlations. An interactive user interface provides pre-defined templates for analysis and enables users to drill through for data extraction and data links.
Hatzis said that i-Sight is unique in its capability to create associations between genomic and proteomic data.
“Platforms in use today place a strong emphasis on data integration and add a few analytical tools to interpret the integrated data. Our platform specializes in analytical capabilities to derive complete understanding of disparate data and could complement existing platforms that enable data warehousing of discovery data,” Hatzis said.
Hatzis said that i-Sight currently addresses clinical and post-approval drug safety data, with genomic and proteomics data analysis capabilities to follow soon behind. He said that a pharmacogenomics piece would be added in another six months.
A patent is pending on the technology.
— BT