Researchers at the University of Toronto have won a CA$50,000 ($49,200) grant from the Ontario Genomics Institute to develop software to identify disease-causing mutations in DNA sequence data.
Under the six-month award, Michael Brudno, an associate professor of computational biology, and his co-worker Marc Fiume will develop a software platform called MedSavant.
MedSavant is a search engine for patient information, medical observations, and genome sequencing data that "will make the discovery of disease origin and analysis more accessible to geneticists and medical professionals," according to OGI.
By the end of the project, the researchers plan to have developed a prototype that the Centre for Applied Genomics at the Hospital for Sick Children will use to identify disease-causing mutations.
The award was made under the OGI's SPARK program, which provides seed funding for high-impact, high-risk technology development projects in genomics.