BioDatomics Receives New Investment
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BioDatomics™ has received a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and a capital investment from the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development’s (MDBED) Maryland Venture Fund (MVF). These strategic investments will allow the company to further expand the capabilities of their next generation sequencing (NGS) data analysis platform, BioDT™.
The NIH continues to support NGS projects that focus on solving Big Data challenges associated with genomic research, and on democratizing access to advanced analysis platforms. With this NIH grant, “Building an open-source cloud-based computational platform to improve data access,” BioDatomics will further expand its open –source toolset, bringing these added capabilities to researchers and bioinformaticians alike.
“BioDatomics and the NIH share a mutual goal of accelerating genomic-based discoveries,” said Alan Taffel, President of BioDatomics. “While NGS funding has traditionally focused on generating new data, there is now an obvious need for NGS users to be able to glean insights from that data more quickly and intuitively.”
In addition to the NIH grant, BioDatomics also received an investment from the MVF, which provides capital to innovative Maryland-based technology companies. Recognizing the avalanche of NGS data being generated by academic and commercial research organizations, and the need to analyze that data more efficiently, MVF took the opportunity to invest in a platform created specifically for that purpose.
“BioDatomics operates at the intersection of two of Maryland’s fastest-growing sectors — biotechnology and big data. We are proud to make this investment in BioDatomics and look forward to their growth and success in Maryland,” DBED Secretary Dominick Murray said. “Supporting entrepreneurs and small businesses in high-tech, high-growth fields is critical to the success of our economy and State. Companies like BioDatomics are facilitating the development of cutting-edge medicines, vaccines and technologies that keep us safer, healthier and better-connected than ever before.”
“The investment from the Maryland Venture Fund serves as a validation of our approach and provides significant strategic value well beyond a financial commitment,” Taffel said.
Although several companies have recently entered the NGS data analysis market, BioDatomics is the only one to have developed an open-source solution built on the popular and powerful Hadoop® Big Data analysis engine, which allows pipelines to execute up to 100 times faster than traditional platforms. BioDT also enhances productivity by integrating many popular genomic analysis tools into a single platform that provides drag-and-drop editing, real-time collaboration, visualized results, and intuitive table manipulation. The platform is available as a software license and will shortly be released as a cloud-based service as well.
