Cloud Pharmaceuticals, Rubicon Genomics, Bioz and more: News from September 2016

September 29, 2016 | News, products, and partnerships from around the bio-IT community including news from Cloud Pharmaceuticals, Rubicon Genomics, Bioz, and more.

Cloud Pharmaceuticals announced a crowdfunding method to finance orphan drug discovery for ALS and Zika virus. The company believes it can fast track these developments using its rapid discovery platform that combines artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and molecular modeling to design novel drugs. Press release.

Cambridge Semantics announced the release of an enhanced product version of its Anzo Smart Data Lake solution with the ability to combine, manage and analyze all of an enterprise’s data in one place. The Anzo Smart Data Lake for Enterprise enables companies to take advantage of “enterprise knowledge graphs” of unlimited size, similar to Facebook or LinkedIn, but targeted specifically to an organization's information assets.  Featuring an Enterprise Smart Data Catalog containing all of an organization’s data -- structured, unstructured, internal or external -- the enterprise knowledge graph is presented as trillions of interlinked facts made available in any combination, on-demand to approved users. Press release. 

The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) today announced the creation of the Roberts Collaborative for Genetics and Individualized Medicine at CHOP. The $50 million Roberts Collaborative will position CHOP at the forefront of pediatric genetics research and will take a multidisciplinary approach toward diagnostics, clinical management, consulting, therapeutics and research driven by the power of genetics. Press release.

Genomics England is partnering with GenomOncology (GO) to utilize the GO Knowledge Management System (GO KMS) as a tool for clinical reporting enablement. Genomics England will integrate the GO KMS as a key content driver to augment clinical reporting in the 100,000 Genomes Project's cancer program, coupling Genomics England curated database with the GO KMS's data for a comprehensive clinical report comprised of the most relevant drugs, prognoses, and clinical trials. Press release.

DNAnexus today announced that M2Gen has adopted the company’s cloud translational science platform to support molecular data access, management, collaboration, and analysis for the Oncology Research Information Exchange Network (ORIEN) Avatar Research Program. This initiative unites academic cancer centers and pharmaceutical companies in pursuit of shared translational oncology goals: the development of more precise cancer treatments for patients. Press release.

Optibrium and The Edge Software Consultancy today announced a collaboration to provide an integrated solution linking the StarDrop and BioRails platforms. The combination provides a drug discovery workflow linking the latest research data directly from the lab through to decision making regarding the next round of synthesis and testing, reducing the time and cost to identify new optimization strategies and target high quality compounds. Press release. 

Rubicon Genomics today announced an agreement with Curio Genomics to co-market its ultra-fast bioinformatics software package for use with Rubicon’s new ThruPLEX Tag-seq Kits. ThruPLEX Tag-seq creates molecularly tagged and sample indexed libraries for sequencing on Illumina NGS platforms using cell-free or fragmented double-stranded DNA. By eliminating library and sequencing amplification errors, ThruPLEX Tag-seq enables detection of low-frequency alleles with greater confidence. Press release.

Appistry announced today integrated solutions that automate NGS workflows to help clinical labs reduce the barrier of entry and costs associated with NGS based testing. Appistry’s GenomePilot will automate the execution of NGS tests from the lab’s sequencer through the identification, qualification and prioritization of variants. Each case is presented in GenomeNavigator for first review, where a molecular pathologist can either approve the prioritized variants for clinical reporting, or in more complex cases, conduct further investigation using GenomeNavigator’s interactive interpretation environment. Press release.

The Thermo Scientific KingFisher Presto sample purification system will debut at MipTec 2016, the International Life Science Exhibition, within booth C40 in Basel, Switzerland. The Thermo Scientific KingFisher Presto system is designed to be part of an automated workflow using a liquid handler with a gripper or robot arm to purify samples with volumes from 50µL to 5mL. The instrument’s small footprint allows for easy connection to several liquid handling instruments in either a side-by-side or on-deck configuration, allowing flexible selection of platform and use for a wide variety of applications. Press release.

Dotmatics today announced Version 5.0, a new release of the company’s informatics suite.  The new suite contains major enhancements that enable scientific teams to become more productive and better communicate between biologics and small molecule in-house, and externalized collaborative research teams. The new release allows IT departments to integrate Dotmatics seamlessly into existing informatics landscapes while minimizing the total cost of ownership through ease of maintenance, minimized user training, and optional cloud deployment. Press release.

Neem Biotech is working with software firm Ideagen to modernize its Quality Management System following a period of significant growth in the business. As well as modernizing the management of quality, Enlighten will also ease Neem’s compliance efforts by electronically mirroring quality processes to make it easier to meet the demands of ISO 9001 and GMP+ FSA certification. Ideagen Enlighten will electronically replicate Neem’s current document control system, as well as bring with it functionality for internal and external auditing and company-wide risk management. Press release.

SCIEX today announced a collaboration with CW Analytical (CWAL) to develop fully validated standardized methods to measure pesticides and cannabinoids in Cannabis and Cannabis related products. SCIEX will provide CWAL with LC-MS/MS expertise and instrumentation including the SCIEX Triple Quad 3500 System, with MultiQuant Software for processing multiple analytes and samples. Additionally, SCIEX will provide CWAL with onsite technical expertise to obtain optimal detection, recovery, and run time for quantifying pesticides, aflatoxins and cannabinoids. Press release.

Vizrt and SwiftStack announce a new private cloud storage solution for Viz One that will enable a higher usage of media assets. The integrated solution will be on display at the IBC 2016 event in Amsterdam on Vizrt stand 7.A20. By virtually eliminating the costs associated with administering and managing traditional tape and block storage systems, SwiftStack private cloud storage can be scaled as media managed by Viz One grows. Press release.

BioNano Genomics announced that it has elected David Barker, Ph.D., former Chief Scientific Officer of Illumina, as Chairman of the Board. BioNano has further strengthened its executive management team with two additional appointments: Sean Paolino to Vice President, Finance and Warren Robinson to Vice President, Global Sales and Marketing.  Press release.

Novogene Corporation announced today a joint venture with AITbiotech to establish a high-throughput (HTP) next-generation sequencing and R&D Centre in Singapore. The Singapore center, NovogeneAIT Genomics Singapore, will deliver NGS services using Illumina’s latest HiSeq X Ten sequencing system. NovogeneAIT Genomics Singapore, which will include a team of NGS professionals highly skilled in both wet-lab and bioinformatics, will provide cutting edge NGS and research services to the Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN) and South Asia region. Under the joint venture, Novogene will invest in research and development of next-generation genetic testing products and services, especially in oncology. NovogeneAIT Genomics Singapore will embark on research and development collaborations with leading research institutes in Singapore. It is presently in discussions with such institutes and expects to announce initial collaborations in the near future, including a couple of large projects with a research entity in Singapore for the sequencing of whole human genomes. Press release.

DataDirect Networks (DDN) today announced that the University of Queensland has deployed DDN high-performance storage solutions to improve data access between its main campus and its off-site data center. Leveraging DDN GRIDScaler parallel file system appliances integrated with IBM Spectrum Scale (built upon GPFS), the Australian research university has rolled out a new data storage fabric that spans both the main campus and its off-site data center, known as MeDiCI (the metropolitan data caching infrastructure), and allows users to access data regardless of where it resides quickly and easily – no additional user involvement is required. Press release.

Bioz announced launch of the official Bioz Ambassador Program to researchers. Ambassadors around the world are an integral part of the Bioz movement. By joining the Bioz program, Ambassadors will help further accelerate drug discovery and scientific research toward finding cures for diseases ranging from cancer to Zika, diabetes and more. Press release.

OncoDNA announces the closing of a new EUR 7.7 million equity round. Historical shareholders and a new group of investors, led by Ackermans & van Haaren, subscribed to financing round. The funds will be used by OncoDNA to accelerate its already promising international growth, develop its innovative SaaS (Software as a Service) platform, and further expand its reference network of oncologists around the world. Press release.