Stratagene and Strand Life Sciences Announce Partnership to Co-Develop Next Generation Bioinformatics Software Tools; Pathway and Expression Analysis Tools for Next Generation Affymetrix Arrays Stratagene Corporation (NASDAQ:STGN), a leading developer, ma
Stratagene Corporation, a leading developer, manufacturer and marketer of specialized life science research and diagnostic products, and Strand Life Sciences, an award-winning informatics company, announced today a strategic partnership to develop a suite of next generation bioinformatics software tools. Under the terms of the agreement, Strand and Stratagene will collaborate on the design and development of innovative software tools to address the increasingly complex demands of biological data analysis for life scientists. Stratagene will exclusively market and sell the jointly developed products, which will utilize Strand’s award-winning avadis(TM) technology.
“We are very excited about integrating Strand’s avadis platform into our software solutions product line,” said Joseph Sorge, MD, President and CEO of Stratagene. “The avadis platform won the prestigious Frost and Sullivan Award for Excellence in Technology in 2005 because of the depth and versatility of its data analysis capabilities. This relationship with Strand strengthens our commitment to delivering powerful and easy to use bioinformatics tools to the life sciences community.”
Stratagene and Strand expect to shortly release two sophisticated yet extremely intuitive software packages that address the two fastest growing bioinformatics software markets today — systems biology-focused pathway analysis and analysis of the new generation of Affymetrix GeneChip(R) Arrays.
“Stratagene is the ideal partner for us, and ultimately, the customer will be the winner,” said Vijay Chandru, Ph.D., Chairman and CEO of Strand Life Sciences. “We believe that this partnership for informatics solutions will enable Strand and Stratagene to take a strong position in the functional genomics informatics vertical as the leading provider of comprehensive solutions to the research biologist. With Stratagene’s strategic software alliance with Affymetrix, we are poised to deliver software tools that will facilitate the biologist through the seamless and effortless transition to the next generation of GeneChip microarrays including exon, tiling and SNP arrays and move from array analysis to pathway analysis equally seamlessly. In short, we deliver a timely, integrated platform from probe level signals to discovery.”
The PathwayArchitect(TM) software is poised to become the new standard in pathway analysis. With its intuitive interface and a highly customizable workflow, the PathwayArchitect software is designed for the life scientist who needs to understand the statistically relevant relationships in their system, not just the biological facts. Its features include network modeling and relevance statistics used to map biological pathways more accurately, as well as the ability to predict biological relationships with confidence. It will also provide richer data sources and relationship types including biological data derived from curated data sources and data from text mining – PathwayArchitect supports MySQL and Oracle databases, can be installed locally on the desktop or deployed as an enterprise-level solution and is fully Mac, Windows and Linux compatible. Scientists will find a simplified and accelerated route to discovery in this innovative data mining application.
The ArrayAssist(R) Expression and ArrayAssist Exon Software are powered by the award-winning avadis technology. The ArrayAssist Expression Software is easy to use while still offering a full spectrum of advanced analytical features such as new statistical tests (multi-way ANOVA and non-parametric statistical tests), data mining tools (classifiers for machine learning-based prediction) and sophisticated, dynamic, interactive visualization options. In combining the power of avadis with the intuitive design of ArrayAssist, Stratagene and Strand are looking towards the future of microarray analysis. The ArrayAssist Exon Software will be capable of processing Affymetrix Exon Array chips, from initial raw .CEL data through the multi-faceted, comprehensive analysis of data in the dimensions of individual probes, exons, and genes. ArrayAssist Expression and ArrayAssist Exon are Mac, Windows and Linux compatible and are integrated with PathwayArchitect, allowing for a seamless data transfer between the products.
For advanced users, a new scripting engine will be featured in all Stratagene Software products. It will allow scripting of complex functions and user-defined workflows and will be fully integrated with external programs such as the R statistical software. The scripting capabilities will enable creation and deployment of automated workflows significantly extending functionality, ease of use, and its usefulness for the research team.
About Stratagene Corporation
Stratagene is a developer, manufacturer and marketer of specialized life science research and diagnostic products. The Company’s life science research unit supports advances in science by inventing, manufacturing and distributing products that simplify, accelerate and improve research. These products are used throughout the academic, industrial and government research sectors in fields spanning molecular biology, genomics, proteomics, drug discovery and toxicology. The Company’s diagnostic unit develops and manufactures products for urinalysis, and high quality automated instrument and reagent systems that use blood samples to test for more than 1,000 different allergies and autoimmune disorders. In addition, by combining its expertise in diagnostics and molecular biology, as well as its experience with FDA regulatory procedures, the Company is pursuing opportunities to expand its product portfolio to include molecular diagnostic kits and instrumentation. More information is available at http://www.stratagene.com .
About Strand Life Sciences Pvt Ltd
Strand Life Sciences is a global life sciences informatics company focused on developing technologies for drug discovery and development. Strand has over the last five years, developed outstanding technologies and capabilities in data analytics and predictive modeling in drug discovery and development. Strand has developed in-silico predictive models for drug properties like ADME, Cardiotoxicity and has an ongoing research program in predictive modeling for Hepatotoxicity. Strand has also developed tools for oligo design, microarray image analysis and has executed several customer specific data analysis projects. Strand partners with discovery contract research companies in India to combine in-silico and wet lab to offer services starting from compound library design to lead generation. Visit http://www.strandgenomics.com for more information.
