AARHUS, Denmark, Sep 08, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- The Department of Molecular Medicine at Aarhus University Hospital is heading a Danish research project on molecular prediction of prostate cancer risk and aggressiveness, where CLC bio will develop the underlying bioinformatics platform for integrated analysis of microarray data and next generation sequencing data. The USD $4M project is funded by the Danish Council for Strategic Research.
Professor at the Department of Molecular Medicine at Aarhus University Hospital, Dr. Torben Orntoft, states, "Prostate cancer is a fast growing health and economical problem in Denmark with an increase of 7.9% of new cases per year for the last 10 years. However, we need to develop much more effective methods of identifying whether it's an aggressive or a non-aggressive form of prostate cancer, so we can provide the right treatments fast and accurately, and thereby increase the number of patients cured, while decreasing the overall spending by preventing overtreatment."
The goal of the project is to identify and validate new molecular markers for prostate cancer aggressiveness using the novel bioinformatics tools developed by CLC bio for this project, new NGS technologies, microarray analyses, and one of the world's largest biobanks for prostate cancer tissue with clinical annotation.
Director of R&D at CLC bio, Roald Forsberg, PhD, continues, "It is within our core focus to invent, design and develop novel bioinformatics software for doing research into molecular diagnostics. This prostate cancer project is a perfect fit for us as we will have the opportunity to team up with world-renowned researchers in our development of a user-friendly and comprehensive functional genomics platform for integrated analysis of CNV, LOH, methylation, mRNA, miRNA, ncRNA, and other cancer related biomarkers. Our planned integration with advanced visualization tools and with various scientific data sources will make this solution truly unique."
The project is an inter-disciplinary translational cancer research alliance bringing together experts from the Department of Molecular Medicine at Aarhus University Hospital, the Bioinformatics Research Centre and the Research Unit for General Medicine at Aarhus University, the Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center at USC, the Department of Pathology at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, and Shenzhen HuaDa at Beijing Genomics Institute.
About CLC bio
http://www.clcbio.com/about