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Quintiles backs not-for-profit group’s effort to develop open access genomic platform

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RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. – A not-for-profit group’s efforts to develop an open access platform for genomics to be used in drug discovery is receiving a financial boost from Quintiles.

The RTP-based contract research organization recently made a donation to Sage Bionetworks, which is based in Seattle, Wash.

The amount of the donation was not disclosed.

However, the group said the Quintiles donation “is a major facet of Sage’s development efforts and will enable core research initiatives.”

Sage calls the platform Sage Commons. Its first efforts include creation of integrated databases, tools for data mining of disease models and also establishing rules to govern the data created. Its intention is to make the information available in the public domain.

“The driver behind Sage’s work is the concept that human diseases could be cured more quickly and efficiently if academic and commercial researchers were able to access and integrate all available data,” according to Sage. “Mining these data should enable researchers to identify new drug targets relevant to disease biology.”

Sage plans to make previously proprietary genetic data and software tools available that were developed at Merck & Co. Sage is based on work launched at Rosetta Inpharmatics, a Merck subsidiary.

“Quintiles is pleased to make this donation to Sage Bionetworks because we believe the organization’s work will ultimately enhance our understanding of the biology that is integral to drug discovery and development, paving the way toward safer and more effective treatments for all diseases,” said Oren Cohen, Quintiles’ chief medical and scientific officer.
 

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