Software providers Tibco Software and Integromics announced the Integromics Biomarker Discovery solution for Tibco Spotfire. The product offers a direct, interactive, visual approach to data analysis that rapidly reveals insights and unexpected relationships in genomics data, and helps scientists categorize complex patterns. With interactive analysis and high-impact visualization capabilities, the product helps researchers examine the expression and annotation dimensions of their data and perform a variety of numerical analyses. Pharmas can also use Spotfire as a flexible analytics platform to allow them to combine and analyze new types of data in order to more quickly pursue their hypotheses and research strategies. Read the press release.
The National Institutes of Health announced that it has increased its support of high-impact research with 2008 NIH Director's Pioneer and New Innovator Awards to 47 scientists, many of whom are in the early stages of their careers. The grants, estimated to be up to $138 million over five years, enable recipients to pursue exceptionally innovative approaches that could transform biomedical and behavioral science. Now in its fifth year, the Pioneer Award program has made 63 awards, 16 of them in 2008. The New Innovator Award program, launched in 2007, supports 61 investigators -- 30 selected last year and 31 more this year. Each Pioneer Award provides $2.5 million in direct costs over five years. New Innovator Awards are for $1.5 million in direct costs over the same time period. Read the press release.
Sigma-Aldrich has published its first peer-reviewed video protocol in the PubMed accessible Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE). This makes Sigma-Aldrich the first life science company to submit a video protocol to the traditional scientific publication process. Peer-reviewed video protocols are an innovative and highly effective tool to increase the efficiency of scientific communication and with it the speed of basic research and drug discovery. "Producing peer reviewed resources and making them available in locations that researchers trust is an invaluable tool for the research community," said John Custer, Marketing Manager-Biochemistry for Sigma-Aldrich. "We look forward to hearing our customers' feedback while we continue working on additional video protocols." Read the press release.
LabKey Software, a provider of open source software that enables teams of researchers to pursue large-scale, collaborative projects, announced it has joined the Microsoft BioIT Alliance. The BioIT Alliance is an association of life science organizations and informatics companies whose focus is to enhance collaboration and accelerate the pace of drug and vaccine discovery and development. "We see two strong trends in biomedical research, data dependence and collaboration," said Peter Hussey, a founding partner at LabKey Software. "The diversity of diagnostic technologies and laboratory instruments presents researchers with the daunting task of managing and integrating the data. We look forward to working with other BioIT Alliance members who share our belief that well-designed and well-executed information systems can make a huge difference in the success of highly collaborative research projects.” Read the press release.
The National Foundation for Cancer Research, a Bethesda, MD-based cancer research non-profit, and InhibOx, a computational drug discovery company in Oxford, U.K., have jointly launched the computational drug screening tool DrugFinder. Using a web-based interface, researchers will be able to submit a target structure together with a known inhibitor compound to the DrugFinder service. InhibOx will use its in-house computing facilities and expertise to screen chemical compound database against the target. The docking and ligand-based approaches will be used in combination during the screening process and the "hit" compounds identified will be returned to the user. Part of the service is offered to the public free of charge. Read the press release.
Invitrogen Corp. and Applied Biosystems Inc. announced the divisional structure and the executive leadership team for the combination of the two companies. The new structure will become effective upon close of the proposed merger, which is conditional upon shareholder and European Commission approvals. The new company’s four business divisions, focused on core competencies, are: Molecular Biology Systems, Genetic Systems, Cell Systems, and Mass Spectrometry Systems. Read the press release.