PerkinElmer is seeing their spate of acquisitions in life sciences and informatics pay off. The Waltham, MA-based company ($PKI) has begun a collaboration with cancer researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) to create a sequencing informatics system to support genetic studies of tumors.
The new system is based on the informatics platform PerkinElmer picked up through its acquisition last year of Geospiza, one of several software companies PerkinElmer bought to beef up its technology offerings to life sciences outfits. At MGH, the new system is expected to aid investigators working on new cancer treatments, enabling researchers to perform genotype analysis to pinpoint clinically important genetic targets. They plan to blend PerkinElmer's automated sample preparation, data analysis capabilities and other advances with existing lab processes and tools at the prestigious Boston hospital.
Plans call for boosting Geospiza's GeneSifter lab and analysis system with algorithms to detect gene variants.
"A key challenge presented by next generation sequencing applications in clinical research is not only maintaining high efficiency and throughput via automation solutions, but also ensuring that the informatics driving the instrumentation provides transparency and traceability for the entire process," said Long Lee of the MGH Pathology Department and Cancer Center, whose research will benefit from PerkinElmer's technologies.
- here's the release
- check out the Boston Herald's coverage
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