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IO INFORMATICS ANNOUNCES FORMATION OF PERSONALIZED MEDICINE WORKING GROUP
BERKELEY – PALO ALTO - VANCOUVER – OAK RIDGE – MONTREAL – FREDERICK,
November 12, 2008.
IO Informatics, Inc. (“IOI” - www.io-informatics.com) today announced the formation of a Working Group that will concentrate on new Informatics methods for Personalized Medicine.
“We are pleased to announce the creation of a new IOI Working Group that will bring together worldwide experts with scientific, practical and business experience in informatics, healthcare and life sciences research areas. Our mandate is to advance applications of IOI’s Sentient software suite; to deliver on the life-changing promise of informatics for personalized medicine. We are very excited to have Amar Das, Jack Collins, Bruce McManus and David Stanley as our first members. They bring with them a wealth of experience, talent and knowledge from the spectrum of areas critical to practical realization of personalized medicine. We will be announcing additional Working Group members in the coming weeks.” stated Robert Stanley, President and CEO of IOI.
The members of the new Working Group are:
• Amar Das, MD, PhD: Assistant Professor of Medicine at Stanford University and a core faculty member of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Informatics Research group. His research efforts focus on the advancement of model-driven architectures and Semantic Web technologies (XML, OWL, SWRL) to support temporal reasoning, data integration, and collaborative systems in healthcare and the life sciences. Dr. Das has received awards for several of his scientific papers in medical informatics and also a Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) Research Foundation Starter Award in Informatics
• Jack Collins, PhD: Manager of Scientific Computing and Program Development for the Advanced Biomedical Computing Center (operated by SAIC-Frederick) for the National Cancer Institute in Frederick, Maryland. The ABCC is dedicated to biomedical applications that especially pertain to cancer and AIDS, as well as work on high-performance algorithms for data-intensive computational biology problems in the areas of genomic analysis, pattern recognition in proteomics and imaging, and systems biology. Dr. Collins received his BA degree in mathematics from Park College with minors in physics and chemistry. His Ph.D. is in physical chemistry (theoretical quantum chemistry) from the U. of Nebraska at Lincoln. Prior to NCI, Dr. Collins worked at SRI International (1985 to 1989) and the Molecular Research Institute (1989 to 1992).
• Bruce McManus, MD, PhD: Professor, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, at the University of British Columbia. Since 2006, he has served as Director of the James Hogg iCAPTURE Centre for Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Research located at St. Paul’s Hospital and as the Scientific Director of the Heart Centre at St. Paul’s Hospital – Providence Health Care. In September 2007, Dr. McManus was appointed as the Director of the recently launched Providence Heart + Lung Institute at St. Paul’s Hospital. In February of 2008, Dr. McManus successfully led the Prevention of Organ Failure (PROOF) team to a $15 million funding award to establish a Centre for Excellence and Commercialization in Research (CECR), in the Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) program, for which he also now serves as Director.
• David Stanley, MD FACS: Medical Director at Vascular Diagnostic Center Oak Ridge and Wound Treatment Center Oak Ridge. Along with his core practice in general, cardiovascular and thoracic surgery, Dr. Stanley has founded several successful healthcare businesses and has made numerous journal and textbook contributions. In addition to active Board and business relationships, he has also been past-President of the (US) International College of Surgeons and Chief of Staff at Methodist Medical Center / Covenant (MMC).
• Joining Dr. McManus, Dr. Collins, Dr. Stanley and Dr. Das from IOI will be Robert Stanley (CEO), Erich Gombocz (CSO) and Bill Hayden (International Business Development).
“I am pleased to join IOI and the other Working Group members for what I am confident will be an interesting, valuable and productive interaction for myself and for all of us involved in the area of personalized medicine. In recent years personalized medicine has emerged as a much needed tool that will allow us to meet important challenges we are facing in healthcare. These include financial challenges in regard to cost, and research challenges in regard to truly realizing the potential of the data we have. These challenges can be met by finding new ways to optimize the creation, sharing and application of knowledge that can make personalized medicine possible. I am impressed by IOI’s foresight regarding technology that can meet these challenges, and appreciate their long-standing commitment to applying Semantic methods as an integral part of their Sentient Suite. As we are beginning to realize, we have vast amounts of data that, when truly integrated using tools such as Semantics, allow us to move out of the old model of storing and querying to one where we can extract knowledge. This new generation integration will prove us with the vital ability to make the strides in discovery, medicine and healthcare we aspire to in the 21st century. ” stated Amar Das of Stanford.
Dr. David Stanley said, “As a practicing physician I know first-hand how personalized medicine can have a positive impact on patients, providers and payers. Being able to apply new methods that allow us to share information with the life sciences research bench and efficiently use it at the patient bedside is a keystone to successfully realizing our goal for more successful and cost-effective healthcare. Just having the data accessible is not enough. We need tools that allow us to harvest both, research and patient healthcare data, to produce and apply the resulting knowledge. By working together we can identify and implement such tools for the benefit of the healthcare community as a whole, and realize our potential as healers. ”
Background Information
About IO Informatics
IO Informatics is at the forefront of a global revolution in software methods for data integration. IO Informatics’ Sentient suite of software products enables biotechnology, pharmaceutical, medical and other life science researchers to structure and define complex data relationships, view these relationships, query them, and capitalize on them — all within a secure, compliant, auditable framework that helps organizations accumulate and leverage knowledge. Founded in 2003, IO Informatics is headquartered in Berkeley, California (www.io-informatics.com).
Resource: Member of Global Medical Research.org - Gregory Rall
Kobe, Japan, the 7th October 2008
Biomedical Cluster Kansai Dear Members of Global Medical Research.org: Biomedical Cluster Kansai geographically located in the Kansai region is a leading life science cluster in Japan; the second largest market for bio-life industries. Biomedical Cluster Kansai connects academia, hospitals and companies across 9 prefectures; Osaka, Hyogo, Kyoto, Nara, Shiga, Wakayama, Mie, Fukui, and Tokushima, where the Kobe Lifescience Cluster, Northern Osaka Biomedical Cluster, and Kyoto Nanotech Cluster are located. Kansai is geographically situated in the center of Japan with 8% of Japan’s land area and its population 21.7 million is Japan’s second largest region. The region’s celebrated vitality is well mirrored by its commercial and industrial strengths and Kansai alone has one of the highest GDPs in the world. Headquarters for some of leading pharmaceutical and electronic companies, such as Takeda, Mitsubishi-Tanabe, Dainippon-Sumitomo, Shionogi, AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, Bayer, Nippon Boehringer Ingelheim as well as Sharp, Panasonic (Matsushita) and Sanyo are based in the Kansai area, which accounts for 16.7% of the total GDP of Japan. Biomedical Cluster Kansai is headed by the clusters in Kobe and Osaka and their functions as the comprehensive contact organization integrating the field of bio-life sciences in the Kansai region, including “Drug Discovery”, “Medical Technology”, “In Vitro Diagnostics”, and “Functional Food”. Both clusters play a major role of promotion through international cooperation with major bioclusters around the world. The main objective for the formation of Biomedical Cluster Kansai is to foster greater research cooperation between companies and academia involved in the life science sectors including pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, and medical device technology across the Kansai region. This includes over 200 universities/research institutes engaged in advanced research and over 200 biomedical companies. Those companies are dedicated to a variety of working fields relating to “drug development” and “advanced medicine”, including: tissue engineering, health care system, supporting devices, marker molecules, systems biology, bio informatics, vaccine, antibody drugs, regenerative medicine, cancer treatment and drug screening. In particular, Dr. Shinya Yamanaka (Kyoto University) reported discovery on induced Pluripotent Stem cells (iPS cells) how stem cells could be produced without using embryos, thus eliminating ethical problems, which is increasingly accepted in biotech institutions around the world. Biomedical Cluster Kansai is specially known for its research strengths in the areas of immunology, developmental biology, cancer and diabetes. As one core center of the Kobe-Cluster it is
to mention the Translational Research
Informatics Center (TRI), which task is
to support and to promote translational
research inside the Kobe Cluster.
TRI distributes the Japanese version of the
American National Cancer Institute PDQ
as well as lauching subsidy for presentations
related to cancer information distribution and
education (http://cancerinfo.tri-kobe.org/ ). Contact:
Gregory Rall
International Collaboration Coordinator
Foundation for Biomedical Research
and Innovation (FBRI)
2-2, Minatojima-Minamimachi
Chuo-ku, Kobe 650-0047, Japan
Phone: +81-78-306-0710
Fax: +81-78-306-0752
Mobile: International: 81-90-3947-8422
URL: http://www.ibri-kobe.org
E-mail: gregory-rall@fbri.org
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