VICTORIA, British Columbia—GenoLogics Life Sciences Software, a provider of lab and data management solutions for proteomic and systems biology research, finalized two integration deals in late May that are expected to help propel the company along its path to be not just a conduit but a consolidator.
GenoLogics and Waterloo, Ontario-based Bioinformatics Solutions Inc. are partnering to integrate GenoLogics' Proteus lab and data management solution with BSI's PEAKS software for peptide sequencing and protein identification from tandem mass spectrometry data. Customers with both solutions in their lab environment will use Proteus to generate and manage the data from their MS, and PEAKS to automatically submit spectra data, with the results captured by Proteus for simplified collaboration and visualization.
The other deal, with Swiss company Geneva Bioinformatics SA (GeneBio), will integrate GeneBio's Phenyx, a proteomics MS data analysis platform with Proteus. Under the terms of the agreement, GeneBio's Phenyx, a software platform for the identification and characterization of proteins and peptides from mass spectrometry data reportedly will be capable of seamless data integration with Proteus.
In addition, GenoLogics inked a deal with Portland, Ore.-based Proteome Software just a couple months ago to begin working together to promote the synergies between Proteus and Proteome Software's Scaffold software for advanced data visualization and mining of protein searches. According to GenoLogics, the two companies are now close to completing the second part of their collaborative effort, which involves developing closer integration of their two products.
Although he acknowledges that integration deals like these are becoming more critical for pharmaceutical-oriented informatics companies in general simply to appeal to a wider customer base, GenoLogics VP of sales Greg Kinch says that's not what's happening here. Instead, he says, Proteus in on a natural lifecycle course that is very much in keeping with the company's strategic goals.
"Our software doesn't necessarily need to work directly with other bioinformatics software," Kinch explains. "Our software is kind of like plumbing—it's infrastructure to help companies get all the spread-out data their various software and hardware tools create into one place. Like plumbing, our product isn't necessarily glamorous, but people need it more and more and, like plumbing, they can become very upset when they don't have it."
Other informatics companies have dabbled in the area of trying to help consolidate proteomics and systems biology data, but Kinch says GenoLogics is the only company that has taken up the task as its primary mission.
Since launching Proteus more than two years ago, the company has focused on the job of tracking data, pulling it together, consolidating it and integrating it so that analytics can be conducted and the data flowed back into the system. But what the company ultimately wants to do—which is why these recent integration deals are important—is to automate the entire process, Kinch says.
"We're not an analytical product," he notes. "But all the hardware companies with their mass spec, assays, 2-D gels and everything else are creating a lot of data. In the end, researchers need to be able to make sense out of all of it and bring it together. We're trying to make things as automated as possible so that companies get the best return on investment for the huge volumes of disparate data they are spending millions upon millions to generate."
"Researchers are demanding robust, flexible, automated delivery and creation of results. If you don't have to worry about putting your hammer's head and handle together…[you] can get on with banging nails in quite happily," comments Iain Rogers, business development manager for Bioinformatics Solutions. "Researchers can get on with the real business of scientific discovery."
