Syapse said this week that it will provide support for the Genetic Alliance's Free the Data! Initiative — a consortium of policy makers, advocacy organizations, individuals, academic centers, and industry that aims to build a repository of information about the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes collected from the public.
The campaign invites individuals who have received genetic testing and who are interested in participating to contribute their test results to the project's site. They can also send a scan or PDF of the test report form with identifying information blocked to the Genetic Alliance. The campaign will share all the variants in the data with ClinVar, the National Institutes of Health public database; however participants will have full control over how their data is shared.
Syapse said it will provide the infrastructure needed for data mining, visualization, and reporting. It will provide participants with tools to visualize their own variations and clinical data and compare it to other information in the database. It will also provide clinicians and researchers tools to explore variants and their interpretations along with clinical data submitted by participants.
Palo Alto, Calif.–based Syapse's platform is also being used to develop GaugeRx, a web-based analytics and assessment tool that will use human health and disease information to support drug repositioning and development that will be launched at the end of 2013. It is being developed as part of a collaboration between Switzerland's EspeRare Foundation and the United States' Genetic Alliance (BI 6/14/2013).