Biodiscovery, a provider of integrated software for high-throughput microarrays and other technologies, now supplies the Oncoscan FFPE Express Service data analysis system from Affymetrix.
Biodiscovery has customised its Nexus Copy Number solution for Affymetrix to create a user-friendly, flexible and compatible tool for Oncoscan FFPE Express microarray data analysis.
Cancer researchers using the Oncoscan service and Nexus software can now obtain critical cancer genome measurements from archived formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tumour samples and obtain end-to-end solutions for faster data visualisation and analysis.
Nargol Faravashi, Affymetrix's global strategic marketing manager for DNA cancer applications, said: 'By simplifying data interpretation with the Nexus Copy Number software, we're providing a complete solution to our customers.
'Our array technology accommodates challenging FFPE tumour samples as old as 28 years.
'Now that it's coupled with a best-in-class software solution for visualising the cancer genome at fine resolution, researchers have a very powerful method to streamline their data analysis processes and accelerate scientific discoveries,' added Faravashi.
Customers accessing the Oncoscan FFPE Express Service through the Affymetrix Research Services Laboratory (ARSL) will receive a preliminary Nexus Copy Number data analysis system.
In addition, Biodiscovery will provide a one-on-one consultation session to assist each researcher with the downstream analysis of his or her data to elucidate pathways and identify copy number variations (CNVs) and the copy-neutral loss of heterozygosity (LOH) events, which are important for understanding characterisations of mutations.
Dr Soheil Shams, chief executive officer of Biodiscovery, said: 'Pairing Nexus Copy Number software with Affymetrix's unique service is an ideal solution for a comprehensive workflow - from FFPE samples to the final analysis and visualisation of CNV and LOH results.
'The latest 6.0 version of our Nexus Copy Number solution is well designed to analyse data generated from the Oncoscan FFPE Express Service, especially with the addition of custom tools for cancer sample analysis,' added Shams.
The Oncoscan FFPE Express Service, based on Affymetrix's molecular inversion probe (MIP) array technology, was designed in collaboration with cancer scientists.
It is designed to overcome the challenge of analysing DNA from FFPE tissues to extract important retrospective clinical data from archived samples and goes beyond the limitations of standard array comparative genomic hybridisation (CGH) methods to yield copy number, allelic ratio and somatic mutation data from minimal amounts of input DNA.
Biodiscovery's software is platform independent and available for the Mac OS X, Linux and Windows operating systems.
In a single project, Nexus Copy Number can integrate and process the data from nearly all commercial array platforms, as well as custom arrays.
With free access to a web-based repository for querying and storing genomic data from any location, Nexus Copy Number is described as a powerful solution for large study groups and consortia.
The software is applicable to many types of studies, from focused cytogenetic projects studying chromosome defects to large-scale cancer or genome-wide association studies.
