Agilent Technologies and Strand Team Up to Advance Integrated Biology Software Systems

We intend to lead the way in providing tools for integrated biology research, and partnering with Strand is an excellent way of addressing the all-important bioinformatics part of the equation, said Gustavo Salem, Agilent vice president and general manager, Biological Systems Division. Studies combining multiple 'omics experiments are finally delivering the results that were hoped for years ago from systems biology and true translational research, and this is one example of what Agilent is doing to fuel future breakthroughs in biomedical research.

We've enjoyed a close working relationship with Agilent over the past three years developing GeneSpring for gene expression and Mass Profiler Professional for metabolomics and proteomics, said Francois Mandeville, Strand executive vice president. We're extremely pleased to take this partnership up to the next level. Developing new scientific intelligence solutions that enable scientists to integrate, model and visualize biological information is an important part of this new agreement, and we also look forward to going beyond this, developing new ways to deliver, customize and support these solutions.

The first tool scheduled to emerge from this partnership will be a version of GeneSpring designed to help users perform statistical analyses of and visualize data from genomics, metabolomics and proteomics together for the first time, using a familiar interface. The partnership also will leverage Strand's technology to enable integrated Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) analysis capabilities for GeneSpring users.

The agreement also includes development of a fully integrated portal for licensing, upgrading and supporting the GeneSpring family of bioinformatics systems.

We're developing a new transactional model designed to deliver the precise solutions and personalized support that researchers want and need, quickly and easily, Mandeville added.

Agilent and Strand have been working together since August 2007. Strand was developing Stratagene's ArrayAssist software when Agilent acquired Strategene in 2007. After the acquisition, Agilent's GeneSpring GX for gene expression was migrated to Strand's Avadis platform, and all subsequent versions have been based on Avadis as well.