We're pleased to announce that Neomorphic has been acquired by Affymetrix.
Information about the acquisition can be found at Affymetrix.com.
Neomorphic is proud to have contributed to the analysis of the human genome along with its major academic partners: the MIT Center for Genome Research at the Whitehead Institute, the Center for Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California at Santa Cruz, the National Institutes of Health and the European Bioinformatics Institute. In the coming weeks, Neomorphic will continue in its collaboration to be the first to analyze the full-length genome. Neomorphic plans to apply its Genie(tm) technology to identify and characterize all the genes in the genome. Neomorphic applied an initial analysis of the first pass sequence announced today, identifying tens of thousands of unique transcripts.
“The identification of all of the genes is only the beginning. A major computational challenge lies ahead to determine the distribution of genes, the location of regulatory and repetitive elements, and the causes of disease. A fundamental understanding of biomolecular processes will ultimately speed the development of new therapeutics to treat disease.”
At Neomorphic, our goal is to mine the human genome to identify novel genes and to understand their roles in disease and other biological processes using our proprietary technologies. We partner with pharmaceutical companies who apply this valuable knowledge to develop new medicines. We call this application of science and technology Disease Informatics. Our methodology significantly reduces the cost and time-to-market for new therapeutics.
The Human Genome contains over 3 billion base pairs of DNA. However, only 5% or so of this information actually encodes genes, the functional units of life. Neomorphic uses its proprietary Genie™ technology to find these genes. Genie is a set of sophisticated algorithms that scan noisy genomic data for unique biological patterns and characterizes the genes. Genie was recently ranked as the best gene-finding tool in the world, a finding which indicates that Neomorphic can find more genes more accurately than its competitors.
The Human Genome encodes many thousands of genes and splice variants. Each of these genes likely plays a unique role in different parts of the body. Neomorphic's computational genomics platform classifies genes into functional groups throughout the body. This platform integrates a broad suite of scientific approaches, applying refined computer algorithms to biological database and literature search results. The result is a comprehensive description of the genes that may be sorted by gene function, metabolic pathway, or primary location of expression in the human body.
The largest hurdle faced by pharmaceutical companies in the drug-development process is a lack of high-quality drug targets. A drug target is defined as “a point of intervention in a biological system that produces a therapeutic effect”. Neomorphic finds drug targets by combining computational results with research on specific disease areas. The result of this research – which includes expression analysis, SNP analysis, and linkage analysis – is a detailed understanding of the molecular nature of disease. This understanding is used to supply high-quality drug targets to pharmaceutical companies for use in the drug development process.
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Sequencing the human genome is only the beginning of the genomics revolution. The results of this revolution will eventually have a tremendous impact on human health through innovative new therapeutics created from genomics research.
Neomorphic collaborates with partner companies to deliver a comprehensive analysis of the entire human genome. The company has developed novel techniques for the identification of genes within genome sequence. The Disease Informatics™ platform enables researchers to understand the function of genes, how they are regulated, and the processes in which they are involved. This understanding enables identification of genes involved in particular disease states and the discovery of small molecule drug targets, antibody drug targets, and protein therapeutics.
Neomorphic can provide access to several of its proprietary technologies, including Genie and Annotation Station.
Genie was developed through funding from a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Genie incorporates a broad base of biological information into the prediction of gene structures, including ESTs, cDNAs, protein sequences, and protein families. Incorporation of this information increases the accuracy of gene identification and function prediction. As such, Genie represents a critical first step towards the validation of genes as possible drug targets.
A key advantage to Genie is the gain in efficiency over current methods that incorporate biological information manually and require the services of experienced biologists and bioinformaticians . By automating the analytical process, Genie greatly increases the speed of gene identification and validation.
Annotation Station is a state-of-the-art visualization system for genome annotation that enables biologists to visually incorporate disparate pieces of information about the structure and function of a gene. Biologists can, for example, visualize different possible splice sites or transcription start sites for genes. The scientist can include all of this information to make his or her best prediction of the gene structure and resultant protein sequence.