Agilent Technologies, Strand Life Sciences Launch Next-Generation Bioinformatics Software for Systems Level Microarray Analysis
GeneSpring GX 10.0 Offers Multiple Applications, Pathway Analysis for Biological InsightHyderabad, India, Sept. 30, 2008
Agilent signed an agreement with Strand in August 2007 to develop upgrades to GeneSpring, considered the gold standard of desktop gene expression analysis, on avadis – Strand’s award-winning data analysis platform. Strand previously had a similar relationship with Stratagene, which Agilent acquired in June 2007. Agilent decided to switch its own in-house GeneSpring development efforts to Strand two months later, and GeneSpring GX 10.0 is a result of this collaboration.
“We saw how productive Strand‘s collaboration with Stratagene was, and saw the benefits of developing GeneSpring in a similar way,” said Sanjeev Dhar, Country Sales Head – LSCA, Agilent Technologies India. “This edition of GeneSpring GX addresses the growth of systems-level studies in functional genomics research. GeneSpring has always been excellent at gene expression data analysis. Now, it has evolved into an integrated software package that helps scientists discover the relationship between the data and the biological events occurring in their samples.”
“GeneSpring GX 10.0 represents the first step toward an analytics standard in systems biology,” said Dr. Vijay Chandru, Chairman and CEO of Strand. “Very few development groups in the world could take on such a challenge involving both depth and breadth of knowledge in research biology. The enormity of the challenge was acceptable because of the pre-eminent reputation of the GeneSpring platform, the architecture of the extensible avadis platform and a superb inter-disciplinary development team. We believe that GeneSpring GX 10.0 represents a qualitative change in research biology informatics and are confident it will delight GeneSpring users.”
Beyond Gene Expression
GeneSpring GX has earned a solid reputation among gene-expression biologists, with more than 4,400 references in Google Scholar, including more than 1,600 in peer-reviewed publications. As systems-level studies become more prevalent in genomics research, GeneSpring GX 10.0 adds visualization and analysis tools for applications including alternative splicing, miRNA expression and real-time PCR. To get more insight into the underlying mechanism of disease, GeneSpring now has powerful pathway analysis capabilities. By providing a database of gene product interactions, scientists can build biological interaction networks from their genes of interest.
GeneSpring also provides statistical tools to detect significant changes in miRNA abundance, and integrates TargetScan miRNA gene-target information to determine the biological consequences of detected changes. Additionally, to facilitate validation of microarray experiments, GeneSpring GX 10.0 supports analysis of real-time PCR data.
Enterprise Solution for Systems-Level Research
To support enterprise functional genomics data-analysis needs, Agilent offers GeneSpring Workgroup, a client-server application with GeneSpring GX as the data-analysis engine providing central and secure storage for GeneSpring data and analysis results.
“Genespring Workgroup has the flexibility to act as an enterprise ‘omics’ data warehouse while also allowing developers to build additional functionality using the extensive APIs,” said Ketan Patel, Ph.D., associate research fellow, Computational Sciences, Pfizer Inc., an early-access user of GeneSpring GX 10.0. “This is the main reason why we favored this product, as it allows us to integrate the system with our existing databases and tools and also build out new functionality using scripting in languages such as R, Java and Python. The APIs allow us to extensively search the database using sample annotation attributes. This was very important to us and will enable broader use of omics data within the enterprise.”
“This type of collaboration cannot be quickly turned on and off, because it demands a high level of trust. The products and end user needs are highly complex,” Sanjeev Dhar observes. “We’ve been working with leading Indian IT companies for more than 15 years, and this GeneSpring launch is just the latest of Agilent’s long track record of in-country teamwork.”
About Strand Life Sciences Pvt. Ltd.
Strand Life Sciences -- Strand -- is a premier life science informatics innovation company. Strand leverages its core strengths and intellectual property in data mining, predictive modeling, bioinformatics and computational chemistry to develop products and solutions for drug discovery. Strand’s products are built on the award-winning platform avadis. More information about Strand is available on the Web at www.strandls.com.
About Agilent Technologies
Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) is the world’s premier measurement company and a technology leader in communications, electronics, life sciences and chemical analysis. The company’s 19,000 employees serve customers in more than 110 countries. Agilent had net revenues of $5.4 billion in fiscal 2007. Information about Agilent is available on the Web at www.agilent.com.
Agilent in India has approximately 1800 professionals engaged in a wide range of high value added activities that include cutting edge research and development work, Engineering & IT services, global business support and financial services for the global operations of the company. Agilent has offices in Gurgaon, Chandigarh, Bangalore, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Chennai and Hyderabad.
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EDITORIAL CONTACTS:
Contact Strand Life Sciences -
Radhika Choudary,
Director (Corporate Affairs)
India Office - Tel: +91-80-2361-8992
E-mail: radhika@strandls.com