Life Technologies inked separate collaborations with CollabRx and Ingenuity Systems that will integrate the two firms’ analytics platforms with Life’s products. The deal with Ingenuity means clinicians will be able to access the latter’s analysis software through a dedicated portal for use in interpreting the results from Life’s molecular diagnostic tests. The agreement with CollabRx will focus on developing and commercializing the firm’s cloud-based genomics analysis and content resources for use in conjunction with Life’s cancer diagnostics pipeline and laboratory-developed test services business.

CollabRx’ medical and scientific content is organized in knowledgebases that express the relationship between genetic profiles, other aspects of the patient’s disease, such as stage and prior treatments, and potential therapeutic avenues, including molecular diagnostics, clinical trials, and drugs relevant to treatment planning. At the heart of these knowledgebases are Molecular Disease Models (MDMs) that incorporate the latest genomic data.

Life will use the CollabRx technology and content to marry the results of its own broad molecular profiling panels with associated data on trials, drugs, biologics and other data relevant to cancer treatment planning. “It’s critical to contextualize the results of complex cancer panels to make them useful for physicians,” comments Ronnie Andrews, Life’s president of medical sciences. “CollabRx has pioneered the development of a scalable platform and process to provide actionable, accessible, and credible knowledge at the point of care to aid physicians in developing a cancer treatment plan based on tumor molecular profiles.”

Ingenuity’s analysis solutions are all founded on the firm’s Ingenuity Knowledge Base repository of biological interactions and functional annotations, generated from individually modelled relationships between proteins, genes, complexes, cells, tissues, metabolites, drugs, and diseases. The collaboration with Life will provide the software and content to physicians, in context with other software and database solutions, to provide information that could aid in treatment decision-making based on the biological basis of the individual’s disease. Given Life’s recent launch of the Pervenio™ Lung RS gene expression test for lung cancer risk stratification, the Ingenuity solution will initially be made available for the latter’s emerging line of cancer diagnostic tests.

“Advanced diagnostic tests like the ones we are developing at Life Technologies will deliver increasingly complex information about a patient’s disease,” Andrews adds. “It is essential that those results be made relevant to interpreting physicians by making all possible contextual information available in a single interpretation portal.”

Life took a major step forward in its drive to build and expand a molecular diagnostics business, through the acquisition of Navigenics, and also Pinpoint Genomics in July. It was Pinpoint that had originally developed the recently launched Pervenio lung cancer test. Since then Life has in addition signed a companion diagnostic development deal with Bristol-Myers Squibb, and at the start of 2012 the firm teamed up with DaAn Gene to establish Life Technologies DaAn Diagnostics, a joint venture diagnostics business in China.

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