FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Media Contact: Peter Hussey
(206) 667-7193 or email peter@labkey.com
Grant Awardees Standardize Software Platform for Early Cancer
Detection
(Seattle, WA — May 22, 2007) — The Canary Foundation and the LabKey
Software Foundation announced today the fifteen grant recipients of
their Bioinformatics Platform Dissemination Award. A total of $225,000
in grants is being awarded to key labs around the world. The Canary
Foundation and this award advocate the continued development of common
software platforms for research on early cancer detection. Most of the
funds awarded under these grants will be used to customize and expand
the CPAS proteomics platform. CPAS, (Computational Proteomics Analysis
System) is based on LabKey Server and is freely available under a
non-restrictive open source license from the LabKey Software Foundation
(www.labkey.org).
"The Canary Foundation takes a unique approach supporting research on
early cancer detection," said Don Listwin, founder, Canary Foundation.
"We know from experience in the commercial world that when all the key
labs are using and building on the same software platform, they can
focus their efforts on discovering biomarkers for cancer instead of
reinventing the wheel. And they can share and validate their findings
without going through a lot of hoops. We're betting that CPAS is
going to be one of those platforms, so we offered these grants as a way
to accelerate that process."
The award committee received a higher than expected response to the
grant proposal and the proposed projects of a high caliber. "CPAS was
designed to make it easy for researchers to share their novel research
ideas by integrating them into a common software platform," said Dr.
Martin McIntosh, principal investigator at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer
Research Institute and chair of the award evaluation committee. "The
number and quality of applications we received shows that the research
community is highly motivated to share."
In the end, fifteen grants were awarded in two categories to the
following institutions:
Development Awards ($25,000)
|
Institute |
Principal Investigator |
|
Institute for Systems Biology |
John Boyle |
|
University of Washington, |
Jay Heinecke and David Goodlett |
|
The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard |
D. R. Mani and Stephen Carr |
|
British Columbia Cancer Research Center |
Ryan Brinkman |
|
Indiana University, Purdue University and IUPUI |
Jake Chen |
Installation Awards ($10,000)
|
Institute Principal |
Investigator |
|
Functional Proteomics Center, KIST, Korea |
Myeong-Hee Yu |
|
University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Dept. of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology |
Romesh Stanislaus |
|
Barnett Institute, Northeastern University |
Barry Karger and William Hancock |
|
Vermont Genetics Network Proteomics Facility, University of Vermont |
Dwight Matthews and Jeffrey Bond |
|
Biomolecular Resource Center, UCSF |
Richard Niles |
|
University of Essex, England |
Metodi Metodiev |
|
University of British Columbia |
Chris Overall |
|
Wright Laboratory, UC Davis |
Mike Wright |
|
Protein Center, Memorial Sloane Kettering |
Paul Tempst |
|
UCLA, Graeber and Wohlschlegel Labs |
Thomas Graeber and James Wohlschlegel |
Most of the award funds will be used for design, development,
integration and support services provided by LabKey Corporation (www.labkey.com). All
software developed under these grants will be contributed to the open
source project managed by the LabKey Software Foundation.
CPAS is an open source proteomics data analysis and data management
platform. CPAS is the result of a collaboration lead by the Fred
Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and included the Institute for
Systems Biology, and Beavis Bioinformatics. It includes a large number
of proteomics data processing tools, which are integrated by LabKey
Server.
LabKey Server refers to the core architecture and platform used to
integrate and manage research data such as that generated by the
proteomics data analysis tools included in CPAS. In addition to CPAS,
LabKey Server also supports platform applications for managing flow
cytometry experiments and large observational studies. LabKey Server is
updated regularly, with version 2.1 expected by the end of this month.
CPAS and LabKey Server were developed through funding by the National
Cancer Institute, the Fred Hutchinson Center, and the Canary
Foundation.
About LabKey Software Foundation
LabKey Software Foundation is an independent not-for-profit
organization, formed to own and manage the LabKey open source project
and its distribution. LabKey Software Foundation holds copyright to all
source code in the project and licenses it to third parties under terms
of the Apache Software License. The foundation is controlled by its
members. Members include developers from both for-profit and
not-for-profit institutes who integrate their work into the LabKey
platform.
About LabKey Corporation
The LabKey Corporation was formed to provide professional development
and support services for LabKey Server and its associated platform
applications. LabKey platform applications are designed in
collaboration with scientific experts and developed using
commercial-level software practices. Labkey is located in Seattle,
Wash.
For Additional Information
Canary Foundation
www.canaryfoundation.org
Sarah Hawley
sarah@canaryfoundation.org
415-412 2533
LabKey Software Foundation
www.labkey.org
Peter Hussey
peter@labkey.com
206-667-7193
LabKey Corporation
www.labkey.com