BC Platforms, a world leader in genomic data management solutions, today announced that the Center for Molecular Medicine (CMM) at the Karolinska Institute has extended its research partnership with BC Platforms to encompass its newest version of the platform and include its BC|GENOME and BC|TILING tools to add capacity for large scale next generation sequencing as well as superior data handling and analytics.
Ingrid Kochum, Senior Researcher at the CMM at Karolinska Institute, said: “We have been using BC Platforms genomic data management tools for over 6 years for our research purposes and are happy to have broadened our collaboration to encompass these new tools to improve the efficiency of our research into common diseases.”
Nino da Silva, EVP Sales and Marketing at BC Platforms, commented: “We are delighted to extend our collaboration with this prestigious institute in order to further their research into major diseases with unmet medical needs. Our tools can help to identify the prevalent markers that indicate a pre-disposition to these diseases and have been used for example in the studies around multiple sclerosis and type 1 diabetes.”
About the Center for Molecular Medicine at the Karolinska Institute
Created as a foundation in 1997, CMM acquired an independent status. When founded and in an agreement with the County Council, the CMM Foundation raised at least 50% of the total capital by donations and cover remaining costs with a bank loan. Fundraising was successful with donors such as the Knut and Alice Wallenberg SEK 90 million, which covered over 60% of the total cost of the building and the first laboratories started running in February 1997. The CMM building was officially opened on May 22, 1997, with laboratories and offices for 200 researchers, located in the middle of the Karolinska University Hospital area in Solna, just north of Stockholm.
Today the CMM building hosts over close to 500 staff members from all over the world. Network analyses shows that CMM is very well connected with virtually every clinic at the academic hospitals. A similar analysis on connections within Sweden and international connections with the EU countries and USA also point to a very substantial network of collaboration and common projects. Different evaluations also show that the research performed is in many cases world leading. Ever since the start, CMM has turned into a substantial contributor to many international research collaborations, which recently have revolutionized the diagnosis and treatment of many common diseases, such as rheumatiod arthritis, psoriasis, MS and preventive treatments for hereditary colon cancer. Rheumatic patients that previously were almost invalids have regained most of their mobility, psoriasis patients with red scaling skin can see the patches disappear and MS patients have less relapses with the new treatments generated and implemented. An important part of the implementation is to develop guidelines for improved health care and to do extensive post drug release surveillances. Thus a substantial part of the research going on at CMM relay on the unique patient registers in Sweden, e.g. the Cancer register, the Twin register, the RA register and the MS register enabling a follow-up of individual patients during decades. i.e. epidemiology.
