Qlucore, a world leader in the development of bioinformatics software, has today announced an agreement with Filgen, Inc, one of Japan’s leading specialists in sales of science research equipment. Since its launch in 2004, Filgen has earned an international reputation for its work within the biotechnology and pharmaceutical sectors, including its highly regarded Biotechnology Analysis Service.

Japan’s biotech market is currently home to over 1,000 bio-based companies, accounting for revenues of more than 25 trillion yen (£190bn), according to ArgosBiotech, the biotechnology information directory for the life sciences community. As such, Japan is currently devoting substantial resources to developing universities and R&D facilities, encouraging biotech start-ups, and developing large communities of biotechnology companies and institutions in order to become one of the world’s most advanced biotechnology regions.

Qlucore’s highly intuitive software, called Qlucore Omics Explorer, will provide researchers working within Japan’s fast-growing biotechnology sector with a world leading data analysis tool that is extremely powerful and yet easy to use. As such, the Qlucore software will be invaluable for unveiling important new discoveries.

Qlucore’s software is unique in that it allows the actual researchers – the people with the most biological insight – to study their own data and to look for patterns and structures. As a result, researchers do not need to be statistics or computer experts in order to use Qlucore Omics Explorer effectively.

“Japan currently represents the third largest biotech market in the world after the US and the EU, and so this is clearly a very important opportunity for us,” says Carl-Johan Ivarsson, President, Qlucore. “We are delighted to be entering into this agreement with Filgen, as we are confident that this cooperation will help researchers in Japan to learn more about our software, and to achieve extraordinary results with their data analysis.”

In addition to its work with the development, manufacturing, and sale of science research equipment, Filgen also has a solid reputation for providing a number of biotechnology analysis services for the life sciences market. The company also offers a wide range of nano-science products, including ultraviolet radiation ozone cleaners, spectrum osmium, and a plasma film manufacture device, along with an electron microscope trust photographing service.

“We have no doubt that Qlucore Omics Explorer will be very attractive to the scientific community in Japan,” says Hidekatsu Yoneda, Director, Filgen, Inc. “The biotech and pharmaceutical sectors in Japan are growing very quickly, which means that there is a strong demand for truly innovative solutions in these areas. We therefore expect to promote Qlucore’s software with great success.”

The Japanese government has already recognised biotechnology as a key driver of future economic growth, and therefore strongly supports both domestic biotech initiatives and foreign entry into Japan’s biotech market. As a result, Japan currently has one of the world’s most competitive bio-industries, especially within key areas that include pharmacogenomics, protein engineering, glyco-engineering, tissue engineering, bio-informatics, genome medicine and preventive medicine.

About Qlucore

Qlucore started as a collaborative research project at Lund University, Sweden, supported by researchers at the Departments of Mathematics and Clinical Genetics, in order to address the vast amount of high-dimensional data generated with microarray gene expression analysis. As a result, it was recognised that an interactive scientific software tool was needed to conceptualise the ideas evolving from the research collaboration.

The basic concept behind the software is to provide a tool that can take full advantage of the most powerful pattern recogniser that exists – the human brain. The result is a core software engine that lets the user handle and filter data and the same time instantly visualise it in 3D. This will aid the user in identifying hidden structures and patterns. Over the last four years major efforts have been made to optimise the early ideas and to develop a core software engine that is extremely fast, allowing the user to explore and analyse high-dimensional data sets with the use of a normal PC, interactively and in real time.

Qlucore was founded in early 2007 and the first product released was the “Qlucore Gene Expression Explorer 1.0”. The latest version of this software, now called Qlucore Omics Explorer, represents a major step forward with advanced statistics support, streamlined workflows for multiple data types, and a wide selection of presentation methods to aid the user. The presentation methods range from an innovative use of principal component analysis (PCA) to interactive heat maps and flexible scatter plots. All user action is at most two mouse clicks away. The company’s early customers are mainly from the Life-science and Biotech industries, but solutions for other industries are currently under development.