FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
INCOGEN Receives Second-year Funding for Cancer Diagnostics Research
Williamsburg, VA. April 1, 2005
INCOGEN has announced that the company has successfully met their first-year
milestones and received the remaining $1.2 million of a two-year, $2 Million
award from the National Institutes of Health – National Cancer Institute to
continue its research program in cancer diagnostics. The research program
involves a close collaboration with scientists from the College of William and
Mary and clinical researchers from the Eastern Virginia Medical School.
The award is a Phase II follow-on to a previous grant which INCOGEN received
from the NIH in 2003. The Phase I award provided funding for INCOGEN and its
academic collaborators to develop a pilot project in the analysis of data
obtained from surface-enhanced laser desorption ionization (SELDI) mass
spectrometry. This approach may provide alternative, highly accurate, methods
for screening for cancers that currently require highly invasive diagnoses, such
as prostate cancer or leukemia. SELDI was developed by the Fremont, CA-based
company, Ciphergen, who make and distribute the instruments used for this
research. Please visit this link for more information:
http://www.incogen.com/index.php?type=General¶m=cancer+diagnostics
Under the award, both institutions will perform subcontracts to INCOGEN. The
data will be produced at EVMS and analyzed at both INCOGEN and W&M. The goal of
the Phase II research is to develop a ready-to-use, clinical diagnostic software
package, based on INCOGEN’s highly successful Visual Integrated Bioinformatics
Environment (VIBE) software. The new software product will be distributed to
clinical researchers involved in diagnostic work.
About INCOGEN:
INCOGEN, Inc. provides state-of-the-art software and industry-leading professional services to scientists involved in pharmaceutical, agricultural and biotechnology research. The suite of INCOGEN tools includes GenePort®, a web-browser-based information mining and management portal; VIBE™, an extensible bioinformatics visual programming and workflow management platform; and HDFR™ and Magelan™, two image analysis software packages. INCOGEN Professional Services provide scientists with industry-leading technological expertise to assist researchers with every phase of design, development and implementation of their informatics infrastructures. The company is committed to supplying the research community with tools to optimize the analysis, mining, and management of life science data.