SRA Joins the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health

FAIRFAX, Va., Nov. 4, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- SRA International, Inc., a leading provider of IT solutions and professional services to government organizations, announced that it has joined the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (Global Alliance) as an Organizational Member.

The Global Alliance was formed to help accelerate the potential of genomic medicine to advance human health. It brings together over 170 leading institutions in 26 countries, including some of the world's leading healthcare providers, research funders, research institutions, pharmaceutical companies, disease advocacy organizations, and life science and information technology companies. The partners in the Global Alliance are working together to create a common framework of harmonized approaches to enable the responsible, voluntary, and secure sharing of genomic and clinical data. SRA is one of the first systems integrators to join the Global Alliance.

In addition, SRA announced that it has recently won two more awards within its Bioinformatics Solutions and Support (BSS) business, led by Susan Castillo, Ph.D. and John Greene, Ph.D., adding to its presence at the National Institutes of Health and its National Cancer Institute (NCI), as well as at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia.  Bioinformatics combines elements of biology and information technology to organize and analyze large-scale biological data sets, such those found in genomics and genome sequencing.

SRA announced that it is part of a team, along with Google Inc., under subcontract to the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB), a nonprofit biomedical research organization based in Seattle, Washington – one of three recent awardees of the NCI Cancer Genomics Cloud Pilots Broad Agency Announcement (BAA). This contract was awarded to develop a cloud-based platform that will serve as a large-scale data repository, initially storing a copy of genomics data captured by The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) program of NCI and providing the computational infrastructure necessary to carry out cancer genomics research at unprecedented scales. Funded by the NCI and the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), TCGA is a comprehensive and coordinated effort to accelerate understanding of the molecular basis of cancer through the application of genome analysis technologies, including large-scale genome sequencing. SRA has worked with TCGA data for over seven years, via its operation of the TCGA Data Coordinating Center.

Also increasing its presence at the CDC, SRA recently won a three-year contract to provide CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD) resources to enable a Bioinformatics Core, a centralized pool of bioinformatics experts in analysis and scientific programming, to assist in NCIRD's modernization of surveillance and diagnostic methods for bacterial and viral diseases. Part of this effort is funded by CDC's $30 million Advanced Molecular Detection & Response to Infectious Disease Outbreaks (AMD) initiative, intended to use advanced molecular sequencing tools along with cutting-edge information technologies and bioinformatics to enable faster and more effective infectious disease prevention and control. This award reflects continued growth for SRA in supporting CDC bioinformatics, including multiple prior contracts to support Scientific Computing infrastructure and operations, and to support research for the Influenza Division as well as at the Office of Infectious Diseases.

Kamal Narang, Vice President, SRA Health, commented, "SRA is among the leaders in providing bioinformatics services to the Federal government, and we look forward to continuing to support the NIH, NCI, and the CDC. We're pleased to become a member of the Global Alliance and support its valuable mission to support advances in human health through scientific collaboration."

About SRA International, Inc.
At SRA we combine our creativity, mission experience, technology acumen and domain expertise to deliver innovative IT solutions and professional services to address the toughest mission and operational challenges faced by U.S. government agencies.  We are inspired by our customers' missions and strive to provide the best people, working together to generate the best ideas, to deliver the best possible performance - all driven by our enduring values of Honesty and Service®. SRA was founded in 1978. We are headquartered in Fairfax, VA and employ approximately 5,200 professionals operating at home and overseas. Learn more about SRA at www.sra.com.

Any statements in this press release that are not historical data or information constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.  These statements are subject to factors and risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results SRA anticipates.  Some of these factors are set forth in Item 1A of SRA's Form 10-K for its latest fiscal year ended June 30, 2014, and subsequent filings made by SRA with the Securities and Exchange Commission.  While SRA may elect to update forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so except as required by law. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing SRA's views as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release.

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SOURCE SRA International, Inc.

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