The spin-off MedBioinformatics Solutions is to offer software and consultancy on relationships between genes and diseases
The spin-off MedBioinformatics Solutions is to offer software and consultancy on relationships between genes and diseases
The spin-off MedBioinformatics Solutions is to offer software and consultancy on relationships between genes and diseases
The company, founded today, is backed by IMIM and UPF and is developing products and services based on the DisGeNET platform, one of the tools on the genetics of diseases with most information in the world
Ten years ago, researchers at Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM) and at UPF created a computer platform for collecting highly relevant scientific information that had, until then, been scattered across several sources: relationships between genes and diseases. This open access tool called DisGeNET has become a benchmark in the field of research. From now on, it will also have an industrial application thanks to MedBioinformatics Solutions, a spin-off of IMIM and UPF that is to develop software and consulting services that will bring added value to the information of DisGeNET to help companies develop new products and services.
The company came to life, 6 February, with the signing of the deeds of incorporation by the acting director of IMIM, Jorge Martínez, the UPF general manager, Jaume Badia; the researchers and partners of the company, Ferran Sanz, Laura Furlong, Janet Piñero and Olga Valverde, and the investor partners: Frederic Abelló and the companies Prous Institute for Biomedical Research and Icrowd+D.
MedBioinformatics Solutions' offer will be based on DisGeNET, a tool developed by the Integrative Biomedical Informatics Group of IMIM and UPF's Research Programme on Biomedical Informatics (GRIB). Through the 600,000 associations between more than 17,000 genes and 24,000 human diseases it has amassed, it is currently "one of the resources to contain the most such information in the world", according to professor Ferran Sanz, a researcher and a founder of the company. Hence, the platform has aroused a great deal of interest in industry: "Companies have been writing to us for some time now to tell us that they would like to use the information in DisGeNET for their R&D", the scientist explains.
To meet this demand, over the coming months MedBioinformatics Solutions will be putting on the market an offer specifically designed for industrial uses: first, software that will enable using the platform's data with the most advanced features and, secondly, it is to offer consultancy services on disease genomics. Meanwhile, DisGeNET will remain an open and accessible resource to the entire scientific community.