Analytics Engines and Almac Group awarded Innovate UK funding to develop Big Data analytics platform for bioinformatics

Belfast, NI, UK, 02 Dec 2015. Analytics Engines, the Big Data analytics company, and Almac Diagnostics have been awarded an Innovate UK grant to collaboratively develop a scalable Big Data analytics platform specifically for bioinformatics.

Precision medicine focuses on the use of patient data such as genomics to support drug and diagnostic co-development to improve patient care. With the enormous growth in the amount of data being generated in this area, current tools and platforms are no longer suitable for the analysis of these large and complex data sets. Analytics Engines' key focus is on enabling analysis of such data through the use of big data analytics infrastructure and tools. Almac Diagnostics' key focus is on the discovery, development and commercialisation of biomarkers discovered through mining complex datasets. The two companies applied for Innovate UK funding under the "Finding value in complex biological data - integrated 'omics" collaborative R&D call to further develop the existing synergies between the two organisations. The funding has now been awarded by Innovate UK to work together in the development of this platform.

"The collaboration with Analytics Engines and Innovate UK funding is allowing us to transform our established methods for biomarker discovery and validation into automated and scalable workflows to accelerate  biomarker discovery, drug recovery, companion diagnostics and drug repositioning" said Dr Tim Davison, VP of Bioinformatics and Biostatistics for Almac.

The Innovate UK funding will enable Analytics Engines and Almac to work together to develop a platform for the implementation of complex analytics pipelines for biological data.

"This is a fantastic project for us. The Analytics Engines Big Data stack is ideally suited to the analysis of a wide variety of biological and medical data to help advance precision medicine. We are very happy to be working with Almac on this project as their bioinformatics expertise is second to none. The funding from Innovate UK will enable us to do some excellent collaborative R&D that will be hugely beneficial to both Almac and Analytics Engines" said Dr Austin Tanney, Head of Life Sciences for Analytics Engines.

The collaborative project commences on the 01^st of December 2015 and will run for 18 months.

 

About Analytics Engines:

Analytics Engines is a big data analytics company focussed on using state of the art tools to enable companies to derive insight from their data. They operate in a number of sectors with a specific focus on Life Sciences, supply chain & manufacturing and enterprise.

Analytics Engines platform allows companies to amalgamate data from a disparate range of sources and analyse it using automated, industrialised pipelines to ensure the analytics are reliable, repeatable and reproducible. Analytics Engines is based in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

For more information visit www.analyticsengines.com

 

About Almac Group

'Partnering to Advance Human Health'

The Almac Group is an established contract development and manufacturing organisation that provides an extensive range of integrated services to over 600 companies globally within the pharmaceutical and biotech sectors. The services range from R&D, biomarker discovery and development, API manufacture, formulation development, clinical trial supply, IXRS® technology (IVRS/IWRS) through to commercial-scale manufacture.

The international company is a privately owned organisation that has organically grown over 40 years and now employs in excess of 4,000 highly skilled personnel. Almac is headquartered in Craigavon, Northern Ireland with operations across the US (Pennsylvania, North Carolina and California) and in Asia (Singapore and Tokyo).

Almac Diagnostics is one of five business units operating under the ownership of the Almac Group.  The global company partners with the biopharmaceutical industry supporting the discovery, development and delivery of companion diagnostics. In addition, Almac Diagnostics has a pipeline of proprietary oncology based tests in development in therapeutic areas including breast, colon, ovarian, prostate and lung cancer. For more information visit www.almacgroup.com

 

About Innovate UK:

Innovate is the UK's innovation agency. It works with people, companies and partner organisations to find and drive the technology innovations that will grow the UK economy.

For further information visit www.innovateuk.gov.uk