Bio-IT World Best Practices Award Recognizes Critical Discoveries in Schizophrenia Studies

CARY, N.C.–The National Center for Genome Resources (NCGR), which uses JMP® Genomics to glean more information from its research findings, has won a 2009 Bio-IT World Best Practices Award for research into the genomics of schizophrenia.

NCGR, a non-profit research institute dedicated to improving human health and nutrition, integrates JMP Genomics into its analysis process downstream from its Alpheus® analysis pipeline for analyzing next-generation sequencing data. Alpheus mines and summarizes data imported from NCGR’s multiple Illumina Genome Analyzers, then exports that data into JMP Genomics for further analysis.

“With Illumina, Alpheus and JMP Genomics, we’ve created a turnkey operation to derive significant results that can then be published,” said Faye Schilkey, Associate Director for NCGR’s New Mexico Genome Sequencing Center. “We’ve sequenced samples, used Alpheus to find the most important genes, regions or polymorphisms to look at, and then applied JMP Genomics to explore the statistics.”

Next week SAS will release JMP Genomics 4.0, which offers new statistical tools for quality control, normalization and pattern discovery in huge volumes of genomics data. This all-in-one desktop solution dynamically links advanced statistics with graphics for a complete and comprehensive picture of research results.

“Working with NCGR helps us appreciate how JMP Genomics helps analysts with high-throughput Illumina sequencing data,” said Russ Wolfinger, PhD, Director of Scientific Discovery and Genomics at SAS. “The close collaboration between SAS and NCGR helped guide development of additional tools in JMP Genomics 4 that will benefit all users. For example, we’ve implemented NCGR’s request for a cross-correlation process to find significant associations between variant allele frequencies and expression summaries.”

The award was announced Tuesday at the Bio-IT World Conference & Expo in Boston. NCGR was nominated for the award by SAS, which also nominated one of last year’s award winners.

ABOUT NCGR

NCGR is a nonprofit research institute dedicated to improving human health and nutrition by genome sequencing and analysis. NCGR provides CSPro™ DNA sequencing services using eight Illumina Genome Analyzers together with software tools and services for analysis of large sequencing projects, featuring the Alpheus® software system.

ABOUT JMP

JMP is a business unit of SAS, established in 1989 to create interactive software for desktop discovery analytics. John Sall, SAS co-founder and Executive Vice President, also heads the JMP business unit.

ABOUT SAS

SAS is the leader in business analytics software and services, and the largest independent vendor in the business intelligence market. SAS customers include 100 percent of the Fortune 500 life sciences companies. Through innovative solutions delivered within an integrated framework, SAS helps customers at more than 45,000 sites improve performance and deliver value by making better decisions faster. Since 1976 SAS has been giving customers around the world THE POWER TO KNOW®.

SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. ® indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies. Copyright © 2009 SAS Institute Inc. All rights reserved.