Geospiza has received a phase I SBIR grant for ‘Software Systems for Detecting Rare Mutations’ from the National Human Genome Research Institute (1R43HG005297-01).
Reportedly, this project will focus on improving methods for detecting rare mutations that define cancer types and determine how a cancer cell may grow and respond to or resist treatment.
The company claims that the software will improve cancer research and diagnostics. It will also move next generation sequencing closer to clinical applications, with general use for any application where DNA sequencing is used to understand the genetic basis of human health, disease and response to drug therapies.
Geospiza and collaborators such as the Mayo Clinic will remove many of the obstacles that keep this vision of cancer diagnostics from becoming reality.
Todd Smith, CSO of Geospiza, said: ”This SBIR award further validates that Geospiza is working on the right kinds of problems. New sequencing technologies are advancing at a significant pace and the instrument vendors are making progress in developing a wide range of applications that will change how we examine gene expression and study variations in DNA sequences that cause disease and impact health.
”At the same time, biologists are more challenged then ever when it comes to working with the data and underutilising these technologies outside of genome centers. In gene expression analysis, this award will help us conduct important research to develop new methods to support resequencing applications.”