(PDF) Cambridge, UK – The Open PHACTS consortium is pleased to announce an Associate Partner relationship with Eagle Genomcis Ltd. (Eagle). Eagle intend to work with the consortium members to interface Open PHACTS with genomics tools (e.g. the Ensembl Browser) and workflows (e.g. Hive/Galaxy), and also facilitate the integration of data from major genomics references databases (e.g. Ensembl) into Open PHACTS data stores. Eagle is a leading provider of bioinformatics services to the entire life sciences and biotechnology industry and have established a strong reputation as experts in the field of genomic data analysis and integration. Richard Holland, Chief Business Officer of Eagle, comments “Eagle’s recent experiences in semantic web research combined with our long track record in delivering genomic data analysis solutions to the pharmaceuticals industry mean that we are well placed to make a valuable contribution to the work of the Open PHACTS consortium. We are excited about the potential of this project and the opportunities it opens up for the application of semantic web technology to accelerating drug discovery research.”

The Open PHACTS consortium is building a semantic data integration platform for pharmacological data, to reduce the barriers to drug discovery, creating an Open Pharmacological Space. Open PHACTS will deliver a single view across available data resources, and will be freely available to users.

Scientific text, difficult to analyse by computer, will have factual assertions extracted as semantic triples, allowing for the first time the prospect of querying textual and database data together to give answers needed to identify new drug targets and pharmacological interactions. While the semantic approach has been delivered in small-scale and targeted approaches so far, its promise for multiscale data integration has remained largely unfulfilled – Open PHACTS is a major project including many of the top semantic web experts, committed to deliver on this promise.

About Eagle Genomics Ltd. (Eagle)

Eagle is a Cambridge UK-based provider of genomic data management and integration services who specialise in Open Source bioinformatics and virtualisation/cloud computing technologies. The company is an integral part of the “open development community” and it has formal partnership agreements with software providers including the European Bioinformatics Institute covering Ensembl, the University of Manchester covering Taverna and the John Innes Centre covering TraitTag. Eagle are acknowledged leaders in operational bioinformatics and hold symposia and conduct surveys on the subject, as well as participating in industry groups such as the Pistoia Alliance. (www.eaglegenomics.com)

About Open PHACTS

Open PHACTS is a 3-year knowledge management project of the Innovative Medicines Initiative, running from March 2011, and will deliver a sustainable service to continue after the project funding ends. The project consortium consists of leading academics in semantics, pharmacology and informatics, driven by solid industry business requirements: 27 partners, including 9 pharmaceutical companies and 4 biotechs. The project is on track, with a public prototype release scheduled for Autumn 2012.

This project has received support from the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking under grant agreement n° 115191, resources of which are composed of financial contribution from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) and EFPIA companies’ in kind contribution. www.imi.europa.eu

www.openphacts.org