NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – UK genomics analysis firm Congenica today said that it has won a Small Business Research Initiative competition award for £200,000 ($337,373).
Congenica will use the award to further develop its Sapientia platform, a modular and scalable data analytics tool for annotating and clinically interpreting genomic sequencing data for both human genetic disease testing and research applications.
The company licenses the Sapientia technology from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. The platform processes large datasets of human DNA sequence "with deep clinical phenotype information in order to generate a definitive molecular diagnosis and clinically actionable interpretation of genetic disease for treatment, patient stratification, and drug discovery," the company said.
The Small Business Research Initiative competition was launched in December with funding provided by the UK Department of Health and is managed by Genomics England.
Congenica CEO Tom Weaver told GenomeWeb Daily News in an e-mail that if the company is successful in carrying out the work covered by the £200,000 award, it would be eligible to compete for a bigger award afterwards.